festive favourites

Now some people love turkey with all the trimmings, myself I cannot resist all the dried fruit that is on offer at this time of year. Just last week at work Marcus, Senior Solicitor, brought in a Christmas cake for our festive Jacobs Join. No works do this year due to cutbacks, and tightwads in my opinion. Before you could say Christmas cracker I had wolfed down my first piece and was tucking into the second. Then there was the garland of figs my daughter brought home from the market, gone in an afternoon. Oh and the box of deluxe mixed nuts and dried fruit I picked up on a three for two in the supermarket, all three boxes have been demolished. Yes this time of year is dangerous for dates and dried fruit in our home, it arrives but never leaves. I'm like a kid in a sweet shop, but its playing havoc with my bowels.

The place where time stands still

My sincerest apologises for not posting sooner. My pre-festive To-do list is longer than our new volunteer's hair extensions, which incidentally got caught in the paper shredder last week. I was busy on reception when I heard a blood curdling scream coming from the photocopier room, I hurried over to find her just a false eyelash away from losing her real hair. Thankfully Marcus, senior solicitor, pulled the plug before she was scalped. Anyway I am whizzing around at the moment without a moment's respite and it seems I am not the only one. The usually slow girl on checkout number ten in my local supermarket has picked up speed, so much so she has taken to hurling easily bruised fruit through the scanner. I reported her to management which I wouldn't usually do as she is usually such a pleasant person but I those plums were a touch on the expensive side and I am on a tight budget. So anyway she must have got her knuckles rapped as when I went in yesterday she put my shopping through at a snail's pace and scowled at me as I scrabbled around looking for the right change. In fact the whole of town seems to have picked up pace with people purposefully stomping around down clutch plastic bags stuffed with glitzy wrapping paper, baubles and bows. Everyone except the staff at my local building society. I don't go in often but when I do the service is unbelievably slow. So slow time actually stands still, in fact today I could have sworn the clock starting ticking backwards and we returned to the 70's. It ate up a full forty minutes of my lunch break which could have been spent marching around town with a furrowed brow looking for stocking fillers and cheap secret santa gifts.

Meditation

Skidded into the office this morning on a trail of wet leaves. Thankfully our new volunteer, Stacey, had already got the kettle on so I took a quiet five minutes in the coffee room to get my head together. If I can I do like to meditate in a morning, I know some in the office are slightly perturbed by the sight of me sat cross legged in stocking feet but I couldn't give a rat's eye ball - they're not the ones dealing with the onslaught of reception. So there I sat, breathing deeply whilst Stacey wittered away in the background about last night's telly. I stopped only when she mentioned the presence of one of my favourite soap stars in her bikini. I am a man after all.

Gym

At the moment my life is moving faster than a conveyor belt in a discount supermarket, no sooner have I gone to bed than it is time to get up. At least that is what it feels like, what with work, language classes and my thrice weekly workouts at the gym. That's right folks I'm feeling the burn once again, so long as I don't attend on the days when my ex is there things are alright. Last week I did have the misfortune of catching sight of her as I set off for a brisk walk on the treadmill. I did consider slamming on the emergency stop button and calling it a night but instead I decided to show her my new found fitness and ramped up the speed to a light jog. I thought she would lose interest and make her way to the thigh toner, which incidently she could well do to use, however she decided to stay rooted beside the machine and continually bad mouth me in front of my fellow sports lovers. I started to feel really cross as she belly laughed at my running style, so I did my best to get away, running faster and faster and faster...until I was going at top whack and there was no way of slowing down. I panicked, lost my footing and whizzed off, landing in a crumpled heap at her feet. I should have tied her shoelaces together there and then but I lay there like a fat man only can until a nice lady who teaches the over 50's aerobics helped me to my feet and saw my acid tongued ex away. Revenge will be mine another day.

Pincers

Awoke this morning to the sight of a long legged fiend bearing down on me. No readers it wasn't my latest date just a rather large spider who saw fit to dangle itself above my head. I yelped and jumped up, scaring the cat and waking my daughter. She burst in the room to find me cowering by the wardrobe. She, like me, suffers with arachnophobia. So we both set about finding the cat to set it upon the beast, which at this point had blindly made its way onto my pillow and was languishing there. It was huge, so big you could see it's brown spiky hair and what looked like pincers on it's head. That's right it was tooled up with pincers, this monster meant business. No web making or crazy skittering on this guy's mind. He was larger than a toddler's hand and ready to bite. At least that's what I thought to myself as we captured Evil Edna, our cat, and set her to work. With the spider in her sights Edna crept over the duvet, getting ready to pounce. Myself and my daughter watched from just outside the doorway and thank goodness we did. Just as Edna was about to seize her prey the spider charged forth. Edna yowled and ran from the room, a cat with the spooks. I shook my head and closed the door, my daughter's boyfriend will have to deal with our intruder this evening.

Yoga

I know it's only Tuesday but it's proving to be a stressful week already. As soon as I stepped into work yesterday I sensed a feeling of rising tension in the office. The reception area was packed, three of my team were off sick and a rather inebriated man fell asleep behind a pile of magazines only to wake up once he had defecated in his pants. He didn't know about it but we certainly did. The stench was overpowering, so much so I had to evacuate the office as I fumigated the place with a double whammy of Febreze and Mr Sheen. Luckily Mr Pooh-pants objected to my liberal application of scented aerosols and staggered out to the nearest discount off licence. Thankfully I had already booked this afternoon off as leave and trotted along to yoga. Now a class with my usual teacher is like sinking down into a bed of cotton wool as her honeyed tones wash over and relax every muscle in your body. Perfect, just what I needed, except it wasn't. When I arrived my usual teacher was off sick and there was a squabble in the store room over the last yoga mat. Then the lady covering the class stormed in, in a blaze of tie dye and patchouli bellowing at us to lie on our mats. Over the next sixty minutes she took us through a series of movements with the delivery of a drill instructor. To say I was shattered at the end would be an understatement. With nerves jaggling I headed home for a soothing cup of camomile tea only to find the cat had left a present on my pillow. Surely the week cannot get any worse.

Oceans apart

The amount of advice I have been giving to colleagues at work lately has been phenomenal. I feel I've always been a good listener and rather discreet, except when I let it slip that my Team Leader was pregnant to a packed coffee room - despite the only evidence being a discarded pregnancy test box amongst the paper recycling. Thankfully she was pregnant and shared the news with everybody some weeks later, much to my relief. In fact so many people have been sharing their woes with me lately I've decided to pen a series of self help manuals inspired by the music of Billy Ocean. The first is one for those searching for love, like me, and is called 'Get Out of My Dreams (and into my car)'. It'll be a best seller, you'll see.