C’est l’halloween

Last night we went on a zombie themed pub crawl in celebration of our friend’s 30th birthday and halloween.  I hadn’t done the whole gory costume thing before and have always had an aversion toward fake blood so wasn’t sure how the costume situation would work out.  In the end the hubby and I decided to go as zombie golfers, the hubby was the golfer and I was the caddy – complete with bloody golf balls stuck in our head and golf tee injuries.

Unfortunately the hubby had plans prior to the pub crawl so I had to take the tube covered in fake blood all by myself.  Also it was only 3pm I was well and truly the only person on the tube all dressed up – I got some pretty strange looks from fellow passengers and fearful glances from kids.  The most awkward was when an older woman got on the tube and sat down across from me.  She looked at me then looked away then looked at me again then started digging in her purse.  At this point she carefully unfolded two tissues and handed them across the tube to me presumably so I could wipe the blood off my face.  I politely declined following which she looked at me and started shaking her head like ‘ tisk tisk – kids these days, they just go running around with blood dripping out of their head’.  Anyway I felt  a bit bad but luckily mine was the next stop so I safely got away from the disapproving passenger.

Overall it was a great night filled with gory and bloody costumes – I am pretty sure it wasn’t the only one that woke up with a headache and red stained skin (and hair) from the fake blood – I am hoping it will fade before work tomorrow.

Pic’s below of parts of our costume and below that a link to a halloween song that they used to make us listen to in French class every year.  I haven’t a bloody clue what they are saying but I had the chorus ‘c’est l’halloween, hey’ stuck in my head all weekend – I hope you find it as annoying as I do.

 

Contrary to popular belief there were not elastics in the golf ball when we cut it open, just solid plasticy stuff

 

Golf tee injury - what the woman was offering me tissues to clean off

The hubby's head wound

C’est l’halloween song….(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy5V1lD_0Rs)

 

 

Spooky toothpaste

Halloween here doesn’t come with as much of the hoopla as it does in Canada and the US.  It does seem that people do dress up for parties.   After a discussion with a colleague however we realised that their costumes tend to have a scary/spooky theme versus at home where most girls use it as a chance to dress up as their slutty alter egos and guys dress up in whatever is lying around the house that can qualify as a costume so they can be at the same party as the aforementioned gals.

They also don’t seem to go door to door trick or treating here like they do at home which is good cause I was never good at giving away candy – I don’t share well

Anyhoo while in the US last month I couldn’t resist taking pictures of some of the many Halloween themed items.

Nothing says halloween like a card featuring Obama – who gives halloween cards anyway??

Toothpaste and hand wash? – apparently the containers even glow in the dark!

Unfortunately I didn’t get a photo of the halloween plasters (band aids), kitchen roll (paper towel) or plastic lunch containers….overkill??

 

Spring ahead fall behind

Today we set our clocks back an hour and when discussing it with some Brits on Saturday night I recited the ’spring ahead fall behind’ rhyme to them as they were saying they could never remember which way the clocks went…I was met with blank stares as they dont call this season Fall here so falling behind didnt seem to make much sense.

Fall is something that leaves do off of trees or drunk people do to the tracks on the tube every so often (often enough that they have posters in the tube warning you of the dangers of falling on the tracks)   The season here is called Autumn which sounds more posh than fall – the more I think about it, fall is a bit of a weird word to use to describe a season. ‘Its a nice fall day’  – to those used to using the word autumn sound more like a pleasant day to hurt yourself versus a day to jump in a pile of leaves.

Above and beyond the use of Autumn for the season I have also heard the word autumnal (ah-tom-null) used more than I ever thought I would hear a word which means autumn like or has characteristics of autumn. This dish is made of autumnal vegetables  or the weather feels very autumnal.  When I needed something to explain fall characteristics I would just say fall-like ie ‘its a fall like day out there today’.  Which admittedly sounds like I am a teenager who over uses the word ‘like’ um like its cold and like fall-like outside.

Regardless, I successfully changed my clocks back and enjoyed a very autumnal day – although it was gorgeous and sunny here and warm enough to be out without a coat which felt more spring-like or springtumnal.

Hold please…

Want to know how I spent some of my weekend?  I complained….to three different companies and feel much better about it – it’s very therapeutic (and sometimes beneficial).

I complained to Barclays because someone has opened an account at their bank using our address and a name that sounds very similar to mine but isn’t.  They have so far received a series of statements, a pin sentry machine (some stupid calculator looking thing that you need to log on to bank online at Barclays), and a bank card.  I am convinced that our address is being used to con pensioners out of their benefits or kids of their pocket money (probably not but that’s just what I think) so I want it to come to an end.  Anyway I have called the ‘fraud’ department who promised they would freeze the account, I then received 4 more pieces of post and another bank card – which I physically took to a branch and was assured their account would be frozen….3 weeks later I received another bunch of letters addressed to my evil doppelganger.  So I phoned and complained….well tried to.

I picked up the phone to complain and realised that our phone line wasn’t working.  We had received three strange messages on our machine this week that sounded like static so I presume it hasn’t been working for a while so I had to complain to Virgin.  My issue at this point was that I had to pay to call them from my mobile as complaints from my landline are free but since it wasn’t working I had to call from my mobile – 15 mins later I was still on hold (although with Virgin you can choose your hold music so I chose Pop and was dancing around a bit) so I hung up and send a nasty email (to which they have finally responded to and are sending out a ‘technician to fix later this week).

Finally I opened my Electricity bill from British Gas and realised we were over £900 in credit on our account – knowing that this has to be one of their many screw ups (they screwed up our Gas bill so badly that we stopped paying for an entire year and they didn’t notice however they had overbilled us so much that when we did re-activate the account we still didn’t owe money).  I rang them and the woman hummed and hawded then put me on hold for 9 mind (FYI, I was paying for this call myself) when she finally came back she apologised and said for some reason they had gone back and reconciled the account recently and the credit was actually just an accumulation of what we have paid over the years and that we actually owed  £60 – that is hardly as exciting.

That is all I can complain about for the minute but the most astounding bit about complaining in the UK is that most of the time you have to call 0800 numbers which are chargeable to YOU, the complainer….you’d think that would discourage me but I think I enjoy acting put out and annoyed too much.

Still doubling up on the hand sanitizer

Thought you would want a little update on the swine flu situation.
1) The neighbour is alive and fully recovered from his bout with swine flu and the bonus is that he has given up smoking so now I can sit on the couch in my PJ’s and not have him watching me from his balcony while going out for various smoke breaks.
2) Sneezy swine flu man is popping up everywhere.  This was my favourite as it popped on the a cash machine screen. It actually grossed me me out as I pictured his sneeze drips all over the keypad…thankfully I had my hand sanitizer with me and doused myself with it afterwards

3) The sneezing person image seems to be international as I presume this is the Spanish version of a public service announcement about swine flu (although I am not sure I would want to catch something called  Gripe A – it sounds pretty serious)

4) How’s this for irony? The main actor dude in the swine flu ad caught swine flu!  Thankfully he wasn’t hired to teach us how to cross safely at train tracks or he might be in a whole lot more trouble.

Here piggy piggy piggy

Recently, the government changed their policy on swine flu from containment to treatment  – basically they have stopped physically testing for swine flu so if you think you have it, you stay home and call the NHS (National Health Service) versus going in to see someone.  Once you describe your symptoms, the advisor will decide whether or not it sounds like you have swine flu  (or if you are just a massive hypochondriac) and will arrange for a prescription of Tamiflu be sent to a ‘pre-determined pickup area’ (sounds so technical)  and recommend you stay within your flat for 7-10 days.

The government is also advising that  you appoint a ‘flu friend’ aka personal biatch who can go and pick up the prescriptions for you and  do errands so you aren’t out infecting the rest of the nation.

So far, we have had relatively small interaction with the disease (mainly cause we have had relatively small interaction with the outside world as a whole lately) with only one friend coming down with it (thankfully). That was until this afternoon when I heard someone talking very loudly in our hallway….when I got close to the door to eavesdrop investigate, I found out that our next door neighbour has indeed come down with swine flu.  His flu buddy was in the hallway talking to him on her mobile whilst he stood inside his flat on the other side of the door.   She dropped off some Tortellini for him but apparently couldn’t find the ‘yoghurt thingies’ he had also requested. He is apparently confined to his flat for 2 weeks! Thankfully, we are very anti-social in our block of flats and basically have no interaction with our neighbours – I will however be sure to bathe in anti bacterial hand gel after touching anything in the hall area.

As the terribly named disease moves closer to home, I am going to draw up a shortlist of my  possible ‘flu friends’ and might start stockpiling food in the flat just in case.  Hey, maybe I can piggyback (pardon the swine reference) on the neighbours flu buddy and get her to do shopping for me…or better still,  I could get a job as a professional ‘flu friend’ and go find those ‘yogart thingies that his incompetent ‘flu buddy’ couldn’t find and get paid for it.

PS  How great (read gross) is the NHS sneezing flu man, if that doesn’t convince you to have a full body shower in bleach every time you return from the outside world, I don’t know what will.

(Another) Unwelcome guest

Suffering from a severe form of the heebie jeebies…was talking to my parents on skype then turned around and saw this crawling up the wall. Unfortunately I didn’t have the chance to stick something up beside this beast to show you how bit it was like last time but it was big and chunky and gross and now I think we need to move out of our flat for fear that it may have friends near by (this particular spider fortunately unfortunately got in the way of the hubby waving a flip flop so no fear of him coming back).

Between the pigeons and spiders I feel like I am running a petting zoo….Okay, now I need some vodka and tylenol PM to get rid of my heebie jeebies so I can sleep.

From dink to sink to nink…

Yes, that is right both the hubby and I are out of work  and are officially a no income no kids household…and I guess that means I have dropped from pank to just an ank.

I have realised that there are phases that you go through when unemployed similar to that of the grief cycle (denial, anger, acceptance)

I started with acceptance and for about a day I thought ‘hey this is cool I will take some time off and do all those things I couldn’t do with a job’.  Then I couldn’t remember anything I wanted to do other than going to the spa and that was too expensive.

Then I moved to panic and hit the ‘holy crap I need to get another job we aren’t earning income’ stage which include whoring out my CV to any and every job site that would accept it.  This was followed by a series of rejection letters for positions I applied for….its okay, I really didn’t want to be a ambulance driver or a bricklayer anyway.

Then I hit the distraction stage  where I decided to ignore the fact I was out of a job and be a tourist in London…although each day no matter where I went I ended up window shopping along Oxford Street planning all the new outfits I will buy when I have a job again.  I then distracted myself with domestic chores and spent two days cleaning the flat (including de-greasing the oven, descaling the kettle, washing the sofa cover and cleaning out my cleaning products).  Followed by a cooking day where I made banana cake with a cream cheese icing and a month’s supply of spaghetti bolognese…both turned out well but not spectacularly better than the store bought equivalents I have lived on for 3.5 years.

I am looking forward to the next phase which I call celebration.  The huby has been bettering himself these past two weeks by taking a course during the day which meant I have had to navigate unemployment on my own which has been boring.  As a result I have compiled a list of things for the hubby and I to do to take advantage of this forced holiday.  Some of them include going to the Science Museum, doing the Jack the Ripper walk, hiring a paddle boat in Regents park and maybe even get out of London and see some of the English seaside….oh yeah and look for jobs.

I presume the unemployment cycle will finish with employment but hope it doesn’t happen until the celebration phase can be fully enjoyed….who said beggars can’t be choosers?

A job well done?

From my experience it seems that the UK (or Londoners) have adopted a fairly energy efficient lifestyle. They use smaller fridges which use less energy, very small freezers, washer/tumble dryer combos which are basically useless so people tend to hang their clothes out and running water is set up on an ‘on demand’ system.

In Canada we had a giant water tank – okay giant to me – but the thing is easily 5 feet tall and 3 feet around and is always full of hot water, presumably it takes quite a bit of gas/electrical energy to keep a giant tank of water warm all the time in case someone needs 50 cubic feet of hot water in a hurry. The downside to this is that if you do happen to have a giant bath you have to wait for the tank to fill and heat again before having another.
Anyhoo the system here (in our flat at least) is that the water isn’t held in a reserve we just have an electric heater that heats the water up as you need it (by running it through molten lava or fire or something like that).  But it works and it means that you only use a burst of energy when you need hot water and when you don’t, it sits idle.

For our shower that is located farther away from this heater thing they install a smaller version of the same heater that you turn on and off like your tap (except its a button which is way more fun). For the past year or so ours has been on the fritz (technical term) and has only been spewing out scalding hot water no matter which way you turn the dial.  Last week we couldn’t take it any more as I honestly thought we were going to have physical burns on our skin.

Sooo..we headed off to the DYI store and bought ourselves a shiny new shower unit.  Knowing we couldn’t install it ourselves we hired an electrician, luckily for us he was available the next day (yay recession) and so we booked him in.   He tried in vain for 2 hours to get it set up then decided he needed help from his plumber friend whom he contacted and came over that same evening.  The two of them fiddled for a while then announced they were done…. thoughts??

On the upside the water temperature is much better

Happy Mother’s Day

Happy Mothers Day Mom!

(As I mentioned, Canada and the UK do not share the same Mothers Day nor do they share the same spelling as my UK spell check has nicely suggested I change every instance of Mom to Mum….)

Since I am not sure my card will have arrived in time (oops) I thought I would peruse my favourite e-card site to see what they had for the occasion.  This site is fantastic if you have a snarky sarcastic sense of humour (like me) and is called someecards.com.  Mom, I thought you would like these two cause they are both very very true…(have a good day and I will skype you later )