The backwards man

So I promised yesterday that I would tell you my immigrant story and that it wouldn't be like the Daily Mail headline generator which can be found here: http://www.qwghlm.co.uk/toys/dailymail/

Those of you who know me well will know that I have a habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I am the queen of the disaster, so it came as no surprise last week when I witnessed a nasty accident on the tube.

Minding my own business on the down escalator, I was happily listening to some Dead Mau5 when out of the corner of my eye, I saw something toppling over backwards on the opposite escalator. On closer examination I could see a mans body, out cold, feet first going up towards bank. Very undignified, was my first thought, and thank goodness it wasn't a women in a skirt, was my second. Then I thought- fucks sake, why isn't anyone doing anything! The people behind the collapser were watching in horrified silence as his humilated body hurtled towards the top (well, chuntered).

Realising no-one was reacting in any appropriate way, I shouted out for someone to 'hit the emergency stop button' and 'NOW!'

No joy.

I ran down the escalator, hit the stop button, and pushed my way past the useless gawpers to the collapser- super woman style. It was then I could see why no-one was doing anything- a giant hole in the guys head, which was pissing blood like a hose. Having bitten off much more than I could chew, I started shouting at everyone around me to do something- get an ambulance, help me turn this guy gently around, try and stop the bleeding. After much grunting and pivoting, we managed to get him turned around so his feet were at least pointing downwards- a minor victory. It was then he came too. And he was pissed. Angry AND sozzled. I had wedged myself behind him to stop him slumping forward and in the process got myself covered in blood. He tried a couple of times to stand up, and I shouted at him to stay sitting down and wait for the ambulance. It was about then that I realised that he didn't speak a word of English. Luckily TFL staff appeared and one of them spoke to the chap in Polish. By this time he was properly shouting and waving his arms and she explained to me it was because he did not want to have an ambulance called.

Don't be so silly, I thought- how ridiculous. You have a 4 inch wide, gaping hole in your head. You don't have a choice.

The TFL lady looked at me with a worried expression, "he's not supposed to be here", "he can't go to hospital because they will find out and he might get sent home". Exasperated, I shouted at her, 'we NEED to phone an ambulance, we can't risk not calling one, look at the state of this man's head'. And so they did. I left with a wet wipe, covered in blood (nice handprint on my arm and cheek) and pretty much an entire carriage of the Northern Line to myself. And a horrid feeling of guilt. Had i done the right thing? What if this poor man ended up being seperated from his family? GAH. You can see why some people these days make the swift decision not to get involved. I for one am glad I did, but I'll forever wonder what happened when I left that evening.

Party OCD.

It’s just over 4 months since we moved into our new house in North London and it seems like we are long overdue a party. So we’ve decided to have one- a joint my birthday, Lindsey’s birthday and fireworks night party as a very loose excuse for one. Now as those of you who know me at all will know- I’m not exactly relaxed when it comes to parties, in fact when they are my own I tend to be a real worry wart. This is a real bind as I’d love to be one of those people who just invites the whole world, doesn’t worry about anything to do with their house and allows any number of people to stay over and sleep anywhere. But no, this doesn’t come naturally to me. In the slightest. In fact I’m a party host anal retentive.

My thought processes go- oh god, where will everyone sleep, how will they get home, will our lovely new carpet get trashed, will we f**k off our neighbours, will we have to spend the whole weekend cleaning up other people’s mess, will people respect the house and behave, will I have time to pack for holiday the next day and will I have to politely entertain people on Sunday when I’m going to want to leave and never come back (well, at least until people have gone and the mess is minimised).

In Compton Avenue whenever there was a party, I’d get a couple of hours kip in, leave first thing, go back to whoever’s house was nearest and avoid all of the early morning noise and mingingness only to return when the coast was clear and I could crack on with some serious cleaning. Hoovering around bodies is a time consuming bore.

I’ll never forget when Dan offered to host a party for Natalia for some reason (birthday I think) and some bright spark bought half a ton of confetti which was scattered all over the floor to release it’s hot pink, green, blue colours into the lovely cream carpet. I was apoplectic. She didn’t even live with us and I remember on said occasion I was so distraught I had to wake up early to start cleaning up.

So you can see, hosting parties is a distressing affair for me. Thank god I have two level headed, relaxed co-hosts to ease the pain and share the love.

Don’t worry though it’s going to be a blast, and it’ll be even more fun for all if you all keep to the following simple rules:

1) Shoes off at the front door
2) No red wine to be brought into the house at any costs
3) No excessively loud music
4) No laughing
5) No mingling
6) No-one up past 3am
7) No-one passing out in the toilet and making it a no-go-zone
8) Strictly no flirting or copping off.

Enjoy!

(The truth of the matter is that I’ll get hammered and won’t give a toss re: any of the above, but as a worrier, I have to think about all of this and the promptly forget it all and no doubt I’ll be the one sloshing red wine up the walls and knocking on Mrs Miggin’s door to see if she wants to join in)

House of OCD....trip to Ikea.

As I predicted, Friday night, otherwise known as ‘return from Epsom’ became a travesty of the highest order.

Throughout the day I was lucky enough to receive little gems of updates about the gambling progress and various wins along the way.

I even received a moderately coherent phone call at around 7.30pm when I was told that Steve was at Epsom train station and should be home by 8.30pm, handy given that I was due to meet him at 8pm at his and was there twiddling my thumbs.

An hour or so later I was getting bored (ish- although Big Brother was keeping me entertained!) so gave him a call, only to find he’d become dramatically more pissed (darn those booze trolleys on the trains) and was not at Clapham Junction as expected, but at Waterloo. Back in 45 mins he slurred. I grumpily accepted. Another hour passes….’Where are you? I thought you were getting on the tube an hour ago’…..and where is he? The West End, in some fancy restaurant bar having champers. Brilliant. Home in 45mins. You get the picture. An hour later. ‘Where are you’….in a cab. Another lie! In total a series of 5 drunken, heinously bad lies and a total of almost 4 hours late to meet me. And when he did, my god, I’ve rarely seen him drunker.

Result- Ali gets a lovely sparkling new black ipod docking station with amazing speakers and treated to several nice dinners out over the weekend. Bought from guilt. To be fair though my Friday night was RUINED (it matters not that I would have sat there anyway watching big brother and ugly betty….the fact remains, I was stood up!).

Tonight- the house of obsessive compulsives, plus Sam, who qualifies very nicely as she’s as OCD about cleaning as me are going on an outing to Ikea. Lindsey will be in heaven as they provide little tape measures so she can inspect the display stands are up to scratch. I will be in heaven as I can buy new sparkly things to make the place more girly and less boyish and minging and Sam will be in heaven as she is on her own as G has buggered off to New York, so needs lots of love and TLC. Hotdogs for dinner then.

Sod the DIY, it's date night....

So, tonight I’m ditching the paintbrushes, bidding a fond farewell to the varnish, taking a step away from the steamer and spending an evening with my lovely boyfriend. Yes it’s Thursday so that means DATE night. A night spent exchanging sweet nothings, cuddling up on sofas, watching films, eating out somewhere fancy and generally enjoying each other’s company. I really ought to be cracking on with the DIY but a girl has her limits and my brown varnish hands and paint splattered hands and legs have pretty much finished me off.

Given the *limited success of previous date nights, I’m kind of hoping that this one goes smoothly, and I think adding the whole ‘I miss you because I don’t live with you anymore’ element might be a sweetener. We shall see I suppose.

Tomorrow is Epsom ladies day. I’m not going of course as I’m neither a horse lover or a lady, but Steve is. He’s taking a posse of tarted up brokers and will spend the day getting hammered on champagne, talking about insurance (YAWN) and generally being smooth (ish). I’ve come to the conclusion that he used up his charm and smoothness in the line of duty at work which is why most times when he sees me he can barely crack a smile! Or maybe it’s me…..probably the latter. I’m sure this means that by Monday I’ll have a whole host of amusing tales from my weekend.

I think tomorrow night I’m going to campaign that Lindsey and I should go and explore Hampstead and Primrose hill and see which minor celebs we can spot. We’ve already spotted a few in our local…well Lindsey has.

Over and out for now, Ali xx

The house of Obsessives Compulsives

Last night, the ‘House of Obsessive Compulsives’ (possibly a feature length film courtesy of Miller and Shipley in the year to come) was awash with activity of the painting, cleaning, polishing, sorting, unpacking and listening to music variety. Lindsey and I worked as only girls can work (4 hours non-stop of cleaning without so much as a moan or a ‘cuppa) and have achieved miracles in the house. We now have an inhabitable kitchen within which one might cook such simple dishes as pasta and sauce (oven is still a toxic no go area…comparable to the exclusion zone in Chernobyl) a lounge where we can relax and enjoy a whole array of reality TV like the eagerly anticipated launch of Big Brother and a bathroom where I can actually wash and go to the loo….result!

Whilst I gingerly placed things on kitchen shelves, Linds looked on nervously and then secretly rearranged them behind my back- it was brilliant. All shelves are perfectly symmetrical, we have a ‘display’ unit of 3 sets of matching glasses (red wine, white wine, and martini- of course), each distanced perfectly and all sparkly. It looks great. God forbid when we actually have to use any of it. We’re not prepared for that….yet. But we’ll get there.

Next on the agenda is getting the place re-carpeted, apparently the nice man from Carpet Rite comes over and does all the measuring and then a week later, hey presto, it’s done. I’m slightly dubious but happy to be proved wrong in this regard. I have visions of drilling and upheaval and general stress and tears, measuring tapes flying everywhere, a massive scuffle between us and Mr Carpet Rite- lucky man!

Felt very strange to be waking up on my own this morning, no-one to tell about my stupid-as-usual dreams, which this morning I probably wouldn’t have mentioned as they were of the ‘don’t tell your boyfriend THAT variety…but still, it was a little bit lonely. Thank god I had Mr Tiger in bed with me to cuddle.

We're in...

So we’re in. The big move went very smoothly in terms of getting things from a-b, helped out by two lovely chaps who loaded my stuff onto the van and then unloaded it the other end and put it all into my bedroom. Hurrah. On the downside, the house which was supposed to be ‘industrially cleaned’ (and my GOD it needed it) didn’t appear to have been cleaned at all. Hence me covered in dirt-hives all weekend and feeling nauseous about the prospect of having a wee in the toilet….I’ll have to hover…seriously.

So 3 days of pretty much solid unpacking, painting, DIY, bath and oven scrubbing, and tutting, Steve and I have something which resembles a bedroom which a girl might chose to sleep in. With the exception of the filthy, mangy carpet, I’m just about ready to take the plunge and sleep there for a night….although the call of the boyfriend with his king size bed, feather duvets and new pad is very alluring…No Ali. You must move in properly. Tonight I am being lured home with the promise of a spot of furniture polishing and some cupboard wiping. Rock on! We’ll be all settled in no time at all.

On a separate note, I was very happy to find that my freakish OCD with regards to any cleaning was matched and possibly exceeded by Lindsey’s symmetry issues. I caught her with a measuring tape measuring either side of a picture to check that it was equidistant on both sides to the nearest wall….i.e dead centre. This is brilliant as it means I can pick as much dust off the carpet as my little heart desires. She also spent 30 minutes arranging a lamp until it was at EXACTLY the right angle to the TV. It’s the “House of Obsessive Compulsives”, all I need is to encourage Steve to spend more time there…there are plenty of locks and windows to check to keep him entertained for hours. What fun we’re going to have.

The uber pad....almost

It seems the long, and at times, horrendously depressing wait to find somewhere to live might soon be over. Yes, Lindsey sent an email at 12.47pm (not that I was clock watching) to let me and Nat (and Sam) know that the place has real potential.

It’s not a show house, gleaming and gorgeous and perfect, but it is a big, spacious, light and airy Victorian conversion, set over 3 floors, has a roof terrace, has views from said roof terrace of Hampstead Heath, is ten minutes walk from both Hampstead Heath and Camden Lock, a 20 minute bike ride into work for both Lindsey and I, 8 minutes walk from the nearest Northern line stop and if Foxtons had it on their books, it would cost in the region of £500-600 a week (although the landlord would only see £1.97 of that). The beauty of it is, as we’re going to be privately renting it directly from the landlord, we can afford it. Infact, we can afford it and still have pocket money for frequent shopping, partying and eating out. Thank the lord, hallelujah, etc etc.

Of course there’s the minor point that neither Nat nor I have seen it yet, but we’ll both be doing that on Friday and from then on, it should be a done deal. The place is free from mid-late May, so I’ll be doing some of my finest sweet talking and grovelling to the poor people in my life who ensure my presence, or the presence of my possessions.

Soon after we move in we’ll be planning our first house party, and we’ll expect a lovely big Brighton contingent to show up and make the most of the roof terrace and the ignoramus (spell check put that in and it made me laugh….I was trying to say gi-normous) lounge, from which Gavin can pump out tunes whilst we all mingle appreciatively. I’m moving to London. I hope I like it.