The Travel Trollop did a bad/good* thing!

*delete as appropriate

The problem with being unemployed and terminally bored is that it inevitably leads to mischief; those itchy feet start itching away and grand plans start forming in my mushy brain. I’ve been home for nearly four months now and with no job in sight predictably my thoughts turn to other ways to keep myself amused. So when an opportunity presented itself, a germ of an idea took root and I had to go for it...

So the bad/good thing? I just booked flights to New York for September. Eeeeek. I’m guilty of spending money and time on something that is totally un-wedding related...bad Sara! It’s bad because I have no way of paying off the credit card and I have a millionty other things that I need to spend that money on; good because, well it’s New York and I’ve never been. Bad because I told my family that I couldn’t afford to go on holiday with them so I’ll be in the bad books; good because I get to see Kirsti (major amount of squeeeeeeeeing involved!).

Turns out that I don’t really care that I can’t afford to go. I need something to look forward to that isn’t a hen party or wedding, it’s cheaper than flying to Australia to see Kirsti and I really really want to go. Bit of a no brainer really and I completely blame Miss "I'm going to the USA in Sept, shame you can't come too" Kirsti. I was going to turn up at Grand Central Station and surprise her but it seems that I’m keeping enough secrets already and it was impossible not to blab. 

So now I have something else to be organising but at least it's something for me and will be AMAZING!

The movie of my life - Bridesmaids

On Saturday Brides 4 and 5, two fellow bridesmaids and I trundled off to the cinema to see Bridesmaids, for research purposes of course. I had heard many good things from everyone who had seen it and was naturally very excited! I wasn’t disappointed.

I have a new hero in Kirsten Wiig. She is, quite frankly, a genius. Not only is she gorgeous and her acting wonderfully funny and touching in all the right places but she co-wrote the thing so she’s really clever too! If you’ve not seen her in Whip It, I really recommend renting it, although be warned, it’ll lead you to dust off your pink Barbie roller skates and fishnet tights!

When I grow up I want to be just like  Kirsten Wiig!

Poor old Annie, it didn’t take much for me to drum up empathy for her. We seem to be in a frighteningly similar situation; single, broke, living with our mums, unemployed and with a crappy love life. We even share that Bridget Jones-esque feeling of inadequacy when faced with smug marrieds and people with careers. Luckily I don’t have to go through anywhere near the level of crap that she has to with my bridal parties. None of my fellow bridesmaids will go out of their ways to ensure the train wreckage that Rose Burn’s character Helen does and my sister would never dream of demoting me to an ordinary bridesmaid. Mind you, it ends up ok for her, she gets the girl (well girly-man Irish cop) and makes up with her BFF and totally makes bitchface Helen shrivel HOORAH! 

Perhaps there’s hope for me after all...

Anyway go and see it if you fancy a lot of laughs, some cringingly gross bits and a musical finale! 

Well durr!

Yesterday I went into the health food shop to see if I could find anything that might help me to get to sleep. I found this:

Much to my delight, last night when I went to make up a brew and read the instructions, I discovered this helpful health warning:

I genuinely laughed out loud, what use is sleepy tea if it doesn’t make you drowsy?!

Incidentally, it didn’t cause drowsiness hence why I’m writing this post at 12:23am *rolls eyes in despair*

Take That and Party (we don't need Robbie Williams)

Thursday will go down as one of my favourite days ever for it was the day that I got to revisit the early 90s, the time that fashion forgot, and do what I was never allowed to do when I was 12. I got to go and scream at Take That!

Now, I was never a huge fan of Gary, Mark, Howard, Jason and Robbie when I was in primary school. I just wasn’t one of those girls who was devastated when Robbie quit or threatened suicide when they split up (although I do remember the day it happened, weird!), I didn’t own their tapes or the dolls or have a TT lunch box nor did I have their posters on my wall. No, I was  a Boyzone fan, there was no room in my heart for anyone other than Ronan Keating. They may have featured on the odd mix tape or two recorded off the radio top 40 countdown on a Sunday evening but that was as far as it went. Well a part from making up a dance to Could it be Magic at my friend Catherine Taylor’s house one rainy afternoon, her brother had it on vinyl and we had a terrible argument because we couldn’t agree on the lyrics!

Love the fact that Nobbie was
photoshopped in as an afterthought!

Nostalgia, it turns out, does strange things to women in their late 20s, 30s, 40s......When the first tour was announced I wasn’t bothered at all about spending a lot of money on seeing a band that I never really liked who were missing a member. By the time the hype got to me it was too late. Everyone but me had a ticket and it turned out to be the most amazing night of their lives, bar none! Suddenly Take That were everywhere, all over the radio and TV, they’d released new CDs and they were doing it all without Robbie and more to the point, doing it brilliantly without Robbie. So I got sucked in and swore that next time they toured I would be there.

I was in Australia when the announced their Progress Tour, it was the middle of the night when the tickets went on sale. I was powerless in the fight to get hold of the small pieces of card that meant the difference between total bliss and crushing misery. I had arranged with Bride 3 that she and a small army of minions would try to get tickets for us, Groom 3, Chief Bridesmaid 3 and her boyfriend and that we’d go as a merry band of five. I put my trust in them and tried to sleep...

Imagine my delight when I switched on my lap top the following morning to find an email in my inbox with the subject line I GOT THEM!!!!!!!! and nothing else.  Of course when I explained to the Aussies in my office what the stupid grin on my face was for, they didn’t have a clue, but I didn’t care if they thought I was nuts, or more nuts than normal, I was very very excited!

More precious than gold dust

Nine months later we found ourselves sat on the floor of Wembley stadium with 85,116 other people that had managed to get tickets, two hours early. The sense of excitement and oestrogen levels were through the roof (not that Wembley has a roof) and it felt totally different to the last time I was there jetlagged after getting straight off a 24 hour nightmare journey from Costa Rica to watch my beloved Pompey lost on penalties to Man Utd in the FA Community Shield match 2008.

I’d never been to a big stadium gig before so I didn’t really know what to expect. It pretty much blew me away. The supporting act was The Pet Shop Boys, who I thought were a strange choice for what was essentially a grown up teenybopper party, but it worked. They were pretty fabulous and electropopped their way through 45 minutes of hits with their strange cuboid dancers!

Pet Shop Boys

By this point Wembley was nearly full, I tried in vain to hunt for some other friends that were there, that was pointless! More and more people piled in. We were squashed and couldn’t see much but we were right in the thick of it! There was a two minute countdown on the screen and then it began...

I was hooked from the beginning when they opened with Rule the World, one of my favourite new ones, sans Robbie. It was a bit touch and go when they made us sing the national anthem (at a concert, seriously?!) but I screamed, I shouted along, I waved my arms like a mad thing and I jumped up and down all with that mad grin on my face until...they brought out Robbie...

My heart sank, I was rather hoping that he had pulled out and buggered off to space, or prison, but no here he was arsing about on stage as if to all the world he wasn’t the most annoying and ridiculous smug git on the planet. This was all much to the screaming delight of all the mad women and some of the poor trampled on, dragged along men too. He shall be hereafter unaffectionately known as Dobbie or perhaps Nobbie for he is a giant walking penis. He swore profusely, he sweated even more profusely and he danced around with his hand down the front of his trousers. Add to the mix a sprinkling of insincere patriotism, looking old, wheezing through the routines and forgetting the words to his own songs along with lying on some moving scaffolding over the crowd so that we could touch his precious fingers and he lost me. I thought he came across as a total arsehole but perhaps that was just me, everyone else seemed to love it, and him. Luckily, after a vomit inducing rendition of Angels dedicated to those that had 'passed on' or simply weren't with us because they hadn't gotten tickets, he wheezed his way offstage and we could go back to the real reason we were there – the other four non-nobhead members of the band. Hoorah!

Look at me, I'm god! No you're
just a big nobhead with no nob!

Oh Nobbie, you're too old to
behave like a douche!

Jump, jump, jump!
Wishful thinking...

They then did some of their newer stuff which, as I hadn't done my homework since coming back from Oz, I didn't really know. But they did have some phenomenally mental dancers on ropes doing gymnastics in a wall of water though – that was pretty clever!

Weeeeeeeeee!

Then came the bit I was waiting for...a grand piano appeared and the 90s were cranked up to the max. The deep recesses of my brain where I keep useless information and song lyrics didn’t let me down and it was AWESOME! They even resurrected some of their classic retro dance moves and flung some shapes 90s style – hats off to them I say!

Watch those necks boys!
You don't want to pull something!

Really though we were all waiting for Never Forget. Pray was good, A Million Love Songs happened, Back for Good predictably went off, the snippets of Take That and Party and Could it be Magic offered some comic relief but everyone loves Never Forget, so we waited with baited breath, knowing that with each song it got closer. The giant robot made its way along the sticking out bit of stage carrying the boys until it got to the end and they started singing the choir bit a capella and everyone went nuts. Six and a half minutes of utter pleasure, 85,121 people united with their arms in the air clapping and singing at the top of their voices. It was almost worth the £60 just for that on its own, almost!

By the end of Never Forget the robot was
standing with his arms out - very clever!

Well 85,120 actually because this guy had his earplugs in...odd place to find yourself if you're not a fan!

Pink and blue shirt man is wearing earplugs
I didn't think my singing was that bad!

I've had some pretty spectacular days in my capacity as a Travel Trollop, I've been diving with Manta Rays and sharks, held a wild anaconda, seen sunrise over Uluru and Angkor Wat, abseiled down waterfalls, seen jaguars in the wild, been to Rio, hugged a 1300 year old tree, climbed Sydney Harbour Bridge but I have to say that this was right up there with all of them!

Gush over, back to reality....

Domestic goddess-ing

So today I took a leaf out of Kirsti’s book and decided to do a bit of baking. I’ve been helping out the lovely folks at my old office (for my sins) mostly as a way of catching up and having a good gossip. Ever since I got back, my ex-colleague Jordane has been bugging me to bake her cupcakes. Tomorrow I’m going in to deal with a massive mailout and taking these with me: 

Hopefully yumptious marshmallow cupcakes

From the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook, they are ordinary vanilla sponge fairy cakes but you melt some marshmallows in a bowl over some hot water, pink ones of course, scoop out a bit of the cake fill it with the melted marshmallow and then ice with buttercream icing mixed with mini-marshmallows. Turns out that it’s easier said than done to get melted marshmallow to behave itself in any way, shape or form. I ended up covered in sticky pink mess along with every item of cutlery in the kitchen and there wasn’t much marshmallow inside the cakes at all! 

Melted marshmallow

Big sticky spidery marshmallow mess!

The long and short of it is that I was planning on making these for Bride 1’s hen party but considering the mess they made, I may have to come up with another wee plan! Suggestions on a postcard please....

A little ray of sunshine...

So it turns out that blog posts are also like job interviews and buses, so here is a second for today.  My lovely friend Kirsti (A Quick Succession of Busy Nothings) presented me with my first Blog Award today, this Sunshine Award, being new to this I was pretty chuffed! Thanks poppet! 

 

So, apparently there are rules to these things and they are to tell you all a little bit about myself and then pass the award on to 10 other bloggers. As the only bloggers I know have already had it, I’ve decided to mush together the rules and tell you 10 things about me instead.

1.       I love lists – I write them about anything and everything and find it immensely satisfying to cross things off

2.      Trees are my favourite things, the older, knobblier and twistier the better. Forests make me happy. I once found a tree that was over 8m around and therefore about 1300 years old, just imagine what it’s seen!

3.       I own over 30 pairs of flipflops, and yes I mean flipflops not thongs or jandals weirdos!

4.       I wish Julie Andrews was my extra Granny, I have an unnatural love for singing nuns

5.       Tea runs through my veins instead of blood

6.       I love cake but mostly for the icing

7.       I was born and raised by the sea, I get off kilter if I haven’t seen it or smelled it for a while

8.       There is nothing more joyous on earth than popping bubble wrap

9.       I have been in love with the lovely Oscar winning Colin Firth for over half of my life *swoons*

10.   I am the Queen of Procrastination-ville, why do something now when you can leave it to the last minute?!? 

Fascinating insight huh!? 

The thoroughly miserable truth about job hunting

Job interviews are like buses, you wait around for ages and then two turn up at once. I’m pretty sure that Monday was sent by someone not very nice to destroy me. I hate job interviews, I’m rubbish at them. I’m not one of these people who can talk for ages about how wonderful they are, I’m not very good when I’m put on the spot and I’m just about the most nervous wreck in the world when I have to meet strangers, especially a panel that want to catch you out and are sitting there judging you, what you’re wearing and your answers.

On Monday I had managed to line up two interviews one at a school in the north of the city and the second in a town about an hour and a half away by train. Frightening enough on their own, I wasn’t looking forward to having to go through two of the dreaded things. If I had known what a horrible day was waiting for me I would have climbed back under the duvet and ignored the alarm clock.

 I am a terminal insomniac at the best of times; there was no hope for a good night’s sleep before the day of doom! I woke up after about four hours sleep feeling groggy and wrong and that was just the beginning. Phase one of the day went pretty well, I got to the first interview in plenty of time so wandered up the high street to get some hayfever tablets as I had forgotten to take some. By this point after walking to the train station and then to the chemist my feet were starting to get sore in my interview heels.

The first interview was awful; I couldn’t seem to get my head together to answer the questions. It didn’t help that I couldn’t really work out what they were asking me half the time and the other half they seemed to be asking me the same questions but worded slightly differently. There’s only a certain number of times that you can say that you’re really organised, efficient and committed without starting to sound like you’re either trying to convince yourself or that you’re a bit mad! I wasn’t holding out much hope by the time they actually let me go.

I was a bit early for the train to Andover for interview two so I thought I might as well go and get some lunch from the bakery to eat on the train. By now my feet were severely protesting (considering they are happiest in flip flops or bare it wasn’t surprising!) so when I got on the train I plastered myself up. Turns out they were actually bleeding. Fun times! I get to Basingstoke where I am to change to the Andover train. By a cruel twist of fate the signals near London had broken down and no trains were getting through, the guard couldn’t really tell me what was going on and thought it would be at least 40 minutes before things got moving again. I had an hour to get to Andover and to the office. After a minor fit of indecision I decided that the best course of action would be to hop on a bus and just hope that it would get me there in time. I thought I had better call the office to explain that I might be a bit late and it wasn’t my fault but when I tried the number I couldn’t get through, I left a message on the voicemail and called the agency that set up the interview, no answer or voicemail there at all. The agency finally picked up but the woman dealing with the account was off that day, helpful! The poor woman that answered the phone must have sensed my utter distress because she went off to sort it out for me, turns out the woman taking the interviews had had a family bereavement in the night and wasn’t going to be there...great! In the meantime the office called me back so I could apologise. The bus took the phenomenally long touring route of North Hampshire villages before finally dropping me off by which point I was bursting for the loo (fun fact about the Travel Trollop:  she has a tiny tiny bladder!) I arrived at the office only about 20 minutes late (via the shopping centre toilets) and rang the doorbell. Nothing happened. I rang it for about 5 minutes and knocked on the door. Nothing happened. Resisting the urge to scream I pop downstairs and ring the bell for a different department and get them to let me in. I met the people taking the interview and they were so nice to me I could have cried. They gave me a glass of water and made me take five minutes to gather my thoughts before calling me in. This one went so much better than the other one, no curve ball questions, no repeating myself till I was blue in the face. They seemed genuinely pleased with my answers and I could see myself working there with them. All good then. The ordeal seemed to be over.

Feeling slightly giddy with relief I hobbled through the town centre back towards the train station. I decided to stop at a cafe and have a cup of tea and a breather before getting on the train. All things were fine until I got back to Basingstoke where chaos was reigning supreme. The trains were still not really getting through and there were massive massive delays. One train was over 2 hours and 40 minutes late! I was lucky; mine was only running 57 minutes behind schedule! The long and the short of it is that it took me over three and a half hours to get back to Portsmouth and I’d barely crossed the county border! Luckily I have a very kind sister who came to pick me up from the station and drop me home, handy because I could barely stand let alone walk the twenty minutes home, where I had an hour to get changed and eat before heading out to see some friends (Brides 2 and 5) for a glass of wine and a good natter, my saving grace. An excellent avoidance technique for the parents, who were just being supportive, wanted to dissect everything and make a decision about which I’d accept if I was offered both. I just wanted to curl up and not think about it for a very long time!

You can tell that you’ve had a bad day when you sleep like the dead until 11:30 the next morning without even rolling over!  I woke up on Tuesday feeling hung over (strange considering I’d had nothing but tea), jet lagged and fluey and more than a little sorry for myself.

It turns out that I didn’t get either of the jobs so the whole day was a waste of time and money. I heard from each of them within minutes of each other which made for a not very fun Wednesday morning. But after many cups of tea, lots of chocolate and some lovely messages from my dear friends I felt infinitely better. Apparently it just wasn’t meant to be and something much better is waiting around the corner for me...great. I wish it would bloody jump out and let me know so I can get on with it!