Tuesday 29 September 2009

Clean Up In Aisle 5

After Harriet and I spending the majority of our recent lives readying her shop for opening, we decided we needed a day off and possibly a spot of retail therapy.
By retail therapy I mean a desperate hunt for hair dye in order to address the inches of roots on my noggin in a shade I dislike.
So there we are, having a brief wander around the delights of the local JTF warehouse. I have tracked down the necessary bleaching agents for my locks and we're browsing. Harriet wanders off to look at toys, I glance at the trolley and there's a gaping hole where my handbag should be.
Both hands fly to my face. I am completely frozen as the thoughts run through my head, "my car keys are in there", "all my money is in there", "how will I get home", "how will I get in my home", etc., etc.
I managed to emit a strangled "Harriet" whilst obviously looking like I'm about to pass out.
She dashes over (as well as a woman with a week left till she brings forth a child into the world can dash).

I'm not sure I've blinked and manage a sort of quiet wail of "my bag's gone". She immediately starts to walk away, before turning back and ordering me to start walking up and down the aisles to look for it.
I did a dance not unlike that which accompanies desperation for the toilet. For some reason panic totally disrupts any kind of thought process and the decision of whether to head left or right to begin my search seemed impossible.
I finally began my slow walk down the aisles.
A tannoy noise sounded, my imagination let me believe they were going to issue some sort of code word for 'thief in store'. But they just called a member of staff to the barrier. Quite disappointing and not the red alert I'd imagined.

Several aisles later, more thoughts of "how will I get Harriet home? She's too pregnant to walk!" and "oh my god the keys to everything are in that bag" and there sits my bag on a shelf. Waiting patiently. Just where I'd placed in order to partially scale the shelving in order to reach something too high up.
Ah how clear your memory is after the fact.
I rang Harriet. I explained the fact I am a twat and she came on back to me where I stood shamefaced and more than a little covered in a film of cold sweat.
She suggested that we go sit down and get a drink.
I suggested I go to the loo as I was either going to wet myself or throw up.
Equally pleasing events for a day out.
She then tells me that the tannoy announcement that asked for someone to do the barrier was the red alert I'd imagined.
They'd closed the barrier meaning no one could exit the premises.
So even though I'm clearly an idiot, it was a little bit exciting causing havoc.
But I promise to try and control myself, and my handbags, in future.
Well at least for this week.
Or tomorrow.

Sunday 20 September 2009

More Wild Dreams

The past couple of weeks I've spent a huge amount of time at my friend Harriet's new shop. It opens on Tuesday and we've all been really pulling out all the stops to get it ready in time. It's involved me catching up on all of her paperwork and the like for her and my goodness there was a lot of it. All I've wanted to do is sleep!
I also hurt my foot. Well, rather I hurt my foot way back in June whilst leaping around at a festival. Following that with more leaping about in July at another festival didn't really help matters. Then a couple of weeks ago I went to a ceilidh. I danced a fair bit and by the end of the night I knew my foot was displeased with the galloping around the room.
As it had been nearly three months, I figured it was about time to get some medical advice (well, you don't want to rush these things), I had an x-ray, it's not broken so I have spent all my evenings resting it. And using a lot of ibuprofen gel every day. It's SO rock and roll.
When I went up to the x-ray department the receptionist motioned for me to take a seat, now we all know this is the point you make a vital decision. Who is going to make the least annoying neighbour?
I sat down, leaving the obligatory spare seat between myself and the gentleman to my right. At this point I am reminded how short I am when I realise that, once seated, I can no longer touch the floor, so my legs swing like I'm a toddler. I then realise I can hear the thud, thud, thud of a repetitive bassline. I had not chosen wisely in my neighbour.
He is listening to his thudding through only one earphone, broadcasting to the waiting room through the other. I sit and calmly consider ways of causing him pain or at least making him go away with his thudding. Then he leans towards me, points at my arm and says "that's a really nice tattoo".

Damn it.
Now I feel guilty for being mean about him in my head.
I felt even worse when the nurse came out and said to him (rather too loudly), "come and put on this gown, we'll need you to drop your shorts."

Anyway, on to the title of this post. I've mentioned regularly that I have some superbly weird dreams, but I think I might have excelled myself this time.


Some of the details have become a little blurry so forgive my jumping all over.
I'm at this house, I don't know who owns the house, but there's some sort of get together. The parents of my friend Harriet are there and suddenly a young woman collapses. Harriet's Mum decides that she needs to use those paddles you use to restart a heart - the name of which is really frustratingly evading me. Anyway, these aren't in evidence so her Mum decides to fashion some out of a pair of barbecue spatula things. (See, I said my dreams were nuts.) For some reason only one end could be a spatula and she sharpened the other to a point. Also, instead of needing a voltage, they needed heat, so she put them in a fire until they were incredibly hot. When she applied them it got a little gory - which is weird as I never watch horror - the flesh sort of burned off and I could see the heart.

I have no memory of whether the girl recovered or not!
But, it was somehow discovered that she'd collapsed because Harriet's parents were secretly evil geniuses and had been giving people this drink which made them split in two, whilst also remaining whole so that they were identical twins, but with only one heart between them.
Seriously, I would love a dream expert to tell me what the hell that means.
But wait, there's more...
In one of those dream jumps that you do to a totally different time, I was inside the house and watching a movie, even though it wasn't my house, when I realised something was going on outside. I snuck out and hid behind a bush whilst I watched Brad Pitt (!) and some friends standing on the lawn trying to come up with a plan to beat Harriet's parents!

At this point my friend Pete rode up on his motorbike and I went into a major panic because I wasn't supposed to be in his house and was really worried he'd be cross.
What in the hell?!

He doesn't even have a house! He's emigrating to New Zealand in a matter of a couple of weeks.
I never found out if Brad Pitt managed to overcome Harriet's parents, but I anticipate a Hollywood happy ending would have come along if my alarm hadn't prevented it.

Tonight I should like to dream about cuddly bunnies. And daisies. Or maybe cuddly bunnies eating daisies...