So I went out with the fish people on Friday night and got hammered on Sex on the Beach Cocktails and Sambuca. From what I remember this guy was pretty fun.
Saturday night I went to a Halloween party, which was themed as "Creatures from the deep" Which I chose to interpret as me being a zombie pirate, much like the ones from Pirates of the Carribbean. I got a pirates outfit, and skeleton hand gloves and shredded some green crepe paper to staple onto me for seaweed and glued empty cockle shells to be barnicles.
I looked yaaaargh-tastic!
Today the morning girl at work was not in, which kinda disappointed me as I have started a mini-campaign of terror on her.
Although we get on alright, you can clearly see that she thinks I'm weird in the head and I have no interest in her complicated life about the "talent" she seems obsessed with, flirting and pulling a hundred people in a day.
I had already traumatised her by leaving her a little note addressed to her from some Cod Liver Oil.
" Dear F.
"J" Is coming to collect me later and take me home with him, please do not put me back on the shelves with the other cod liver capsules as they do not like me and bully me terribly.
Thank you very much Mr Cod Liver Oil xxx"
I thought it sounded a lot more fun than just "To be collected later by J"
She saw the note, read it a couple of times incredulously, looked at me and shook her head sadly at me.
Last week she saw me trip the child over in work and I put my leg into a shopping basket and imitated that Simpsons episode where Bart breaks his leg and then manages to get it into a series of scrapes attempting to save Lisa.
"i'll save you Lisa, cast or no cast" Foot goes in trashcan "Doh! I'll save you Lisa Trashcan or no trashcan"
My version was "I'll save you F Basket or no basket and waddling about the shop after her and her horrified look.
Its pretty sad really, but I feel no shame or guilt in getting her.

frined fromphotograhys last day.
Drank cocktails.
Sambuxuca is bad.
Maet nice guy elliot. woman topok me away. huh. went home.
I have a Vampire TriggerFish for Fish of the week cos its halloween innit.
May popst it tomorrow. cos he looks cute.

There's something strangely liberating about knowing you're quitting work.
I dont do anything extreme but take little liberties. Like swearing in front of customers.
Althought I may have scared one of the regs off who came in everyday for his little bag of Caribbean Cocktail.
He looked like an chubby little 8 year old stretched and put into a suit. He giggled nervously when I cursed under my breath his Cocktail for not scanning "you motherfucking wank"

Today there was a bastard demon child from hell running around the shop with its devilspawn companion
They were circling one of the aisles and its parent or their parents were ignoring them, concentrating on the magical properties of Fibre Diet.
So I stuck my foot out as one of them circled round at a million miles an hour.
It skidded to the floor and slid and I felt a warm glow and a sense of "take that bitch" and then the plan backfired cos it started screaming and crying.
Ah well

Today I was awoken at 7am again for work.
I dislike getting up that early, I may have mentioned this.
I determined to make The Health Food Shop That Must Not Be Named pay.
Yesterday I took my final promotion exam and the woman who set the exam didnt leave me alone in the room with the answers. How can someone pass without that?
I did alright, although I was pissed off with the question about where asprin comes from, we dont sell asprin in any of our shops so how should I know?
I scored a mighty 79% with 84% needed to pass. Its a bit of a pisser cos I've now lost my hundred quid bonus for passing all of it completely first time.
But I can retake the exam if I like later.
But back to today, I was determined the company would pay for their crimes against me.
I was working in another shop an hour or so away but would get clocked in by my shop, they were clocking me in for 9-5.30.
So I showed up to work at 9.30 (There's little they can say as I'm there doing them a favour, as long as I'm not cheeky I can get away with being late like that)
I then claimed I had to get to the dentist for early evening and was worried about being sat in traffic for god knows how long again and missing my appointment.
So they said I could go at 4.30. So thats 90 minutes so far I was getting paid for and doing nothing.
I scraped an extra 10 minutes into the bank run by visiting a bookshop on the way (I figure as well it was a good way of fooling potential muggers who might suspect I was carrying over 2 grands worth of money in a plastic bag.)
So thats 100 minutes add to that a cheeky 10 minute extra break onto my lunch and the bastards are gonna pay me for 110 minutes that I wasnt actually at work.
Silly little things like that help get me through the day.
Shame its all back to normal in my shop tomorrow though.

I'm in the middle of the working week from hell.
I've been doing full time hours in Orpington as well as my own shop. Its not too bad I guess, I was swayed by pound signs dancing the tango in front of me.
And then today was a bad day, not only did I have to get up when it was still dark which is sooo depressing (actually it wouldnt be dark if it wasnt for the fact that I'm hopelessly addicted to Tellytext and have to set my alarm half hour earlier than I should so I can read it all)
And then there was the sudden joy of having a whole hour for lunch rather than my quick 30 minutes that I try to fit into when I have my full days in MY shop and I got a 10 minute tea break! Thats something else I dont get at all in my shop!
I was practically skipping down the high street in my excitement.
And then it was hometime and I got on the bus that happened to get stuck in the traffic jam, so for 45 minutes I sat on the top deck of the 51 trapped outside Sidcup Station, gazing longingly into the house nearest and seeing the man there eating what looked like a tasty steak and chips.
While all I had was half a packet of polos.
Cunt.

Its time for Fridays Fish of the Week! We seem to be staying in one section, namely the Coral Reef section so far and so Todays fish is no exception.
I present for your general blogging pleasure.


The Lionfish.





These guys fascinate me, they "sleep" in odd looking positions, upside down and wedged onto rocks.
They can hunt in Prides like real lions too! They open all those lovely elegant frondy fins and herd their prey item into a corner where they can eat them all with a surprisingly large mouth.
And posh looking as they are they're also some of the most dangerous fish you could meet on the reef.
get stung by one of these buggers and you could face anything from nausea, vomiting, convulsions, or even suffer a coma and die.
Charbs advice? Stick the stung bit into as hot as water as you can stand and then get yourself off to hospital quicksmart. The hot water will act to break down the protein based sting and hopefully nutralise its effects.

Its taken a hell of a lot of planning, but! I think I'm finally starting to get organised on this holiday in the New Year, Me and E have decided to only visit New Zealand rather than try and fit in Oz too and rush about, missing out on things and we've also FINALLY come up with a list of places that we wanna visit.
As can be shown by the badly scanned in maps.
Now all we need are important details, like how we're gonna get about and eat and live and stuff like that.
If it was up to me, I'd just pootle over, and figure it all out on the way. E however is a planning, organised kinda person, so she's busy panicking over whether its worth hiring a car to take us round or exactly where we'll stay and what direction we'll do it all in.
My contribution to all this has been to volunteer to be a navigator and cruise along in her slipstream while she fusses and rushes round trying to find the best way to fly there or the cheapest flights.
I quit work today over it, well I quit for January and the conversation went kinda like.
"Big Boss Lady, do you think I'll get time off in the New Year for 6 weeks?"
BBL "I dont think so, why do you want all the time off?"
Me "Ok then I'll quit in the New Year, I wanna go to New Zealand"
her "Fair 'nuff"
HURRAH!

Pinched from Spins and Flash!
1) My ex is: A friend.
2) I am listening to: Oh Stacy - The Zutons
3) Maybe I should: eat some more ice cream, get an evening job.
4) I love: fun!
5) My best friend: is on the bus going home from my house
6) I don’t understand: People who need to know every little detail about your life
7) I lose: everything!
8) People say: lots of things I dont understand.
9) The meaning of my screen name is: A combination of Charlton and Derby.
10) Love is: a mystery.
11) Somewhere, someone is: saying a prayer thatt we'll find another (been watching An American Tail, the song has stuck!)
12) I will always: be there.
13) Forever seems: scary.
14) I never want to: do grown up things.
15) My cell phone is: rarely off of silent/vibrate.
16) When I wake in the morning: I sit in bed reading telly text for half an hour !
17) I get annoyed when: People assume they know me..
18) Parties are: Something I wish I went to more often.
19) My dog is: a urn of ashes under the stairs.
20) Kisses are the worst when: The guy pulls your hair, or is too enthusiastic with his tongue and slobbers.
21) Today I did: walked to work, bused home, looked at my travel plans and watched us on the telly.
22) Tonight I will: playing on the net until the early hours.
23) Tomorrow I will be: going to work.
24) I really want: to be with my friends.

So my weekend!
I got up to Derby after a day at the Fish, got picked up by MH and she took me to Our Beloved Friary for tea and then we went back to hers for a scary movie and to discuss her career options now she's pretty much been kicked out unless her appeal is successful.
And then Saturday H2 came round with Bump, who now has a real name, but I shall continue to call it Bump.
And I viewed it from a distance after presenting him with a toy mouse teddy.
And then it was time to go into town for our Reunion meal with A, STF, N and N's ex housemate J and Booker.
And then back into Our Beloved Friary, where STF set me a challenge, most people who go drinking with me, know that I compulsively peel the labels from my bottles, I can't help it. So he bet me that I had to go the whole night without doing it, or I'd have to kiss A and N.
Which is a good incentive not to do it, so I was good for the two drinks we had in Our Beloved Friary, and then we headed to The Ram, which is a grotty looking old mans pub.
And there was my downfall, I peeled absent mindedly the label off.
STF quickly noticed it.
"Ha! You lose! N! N! Come here!" He looked over, and then grabbed me for a quick peck and then A was thrust at me. I had half a second to think, Oh no he wont go through with it, I'm safe and then he pounced on me to too!
Which kinda shocked me, A is a little different to the rest, he's as naughty and troublesome as them, but he hangs back a bit. Shy.
So then we went on to The Bless which is your typical studenty rocky/gothy/emo-ey pub and then there was some disagreement about whether I'd fulfilled my forfeit or not. N decided to take matters into his own hands about it and launched himself at me.
And tried to shove his tongue down my throat while I shrieked at him to "gerroff me ya caunt"
Into the Bless, chatted to some guy we'll just use the term FS for, about fish and showed him some of my pictures and then back intowards town for a drink in Seymours, a lot of the people out I hadnt recognised, so I imagine they all had left uni before I became mates with them.
I saw some other guy, a cute blonde and smiled at him.
Into a few other pubs and then we ended up in Walkabout, where STF stole my phone and started texting my new Blog Friend Red Squirrel (And I haven't forgotten my IOU).
And then they put some music on so we started dancing and here's where my night got a little confusing.
I quickly became aware of the fact that FS was eyeing me up. I wasnt too sure about this, I only wanted to dance and drink and not be bothered with people trying to get it on.
He told me to act like I would do normally, so I gravitated towards my usual gang and then he pulled me back and started dancing with me and told me not to listen to anything I might have heard from J.
Which puzzled me and I made a note to lose him in the crowd, which I did too, somehow getting into the middle of a pogoing group dancing to Suspicious Minds.
And then I met the cute Blonde guy again and we danced together and he kissed me on the cheek and then his hands started wandering, which I dont mind to a degree, as long as the hands stay OUT of my clothes. So I had to keep firmly placing them elsewhere.
So we danced and we kissed a bit and then he asked me if I wanted to go to the toilets with him.
Which I decided was probably not a good idea and then promptly lost him in the crowd.
And then I got a tap on my shoulder and there was FS.
I looked round and STF, A, N and Booker were all close by, close enough for me to hide with, so I danced with him but keeping an eye on them as I did so, not close enough to be dancing with SF but not far enough to be distant, if you get what I mean!
And then he said something about how if I wanted to be with them I should be, and shoved me in that direction.
So I did and danced with A, who was looking pretty grumpy at having seen me go off with Blondey and FS, (he's so sweet!)
And then FS pulled me back to him and kissed me, and I was pretty much at the stage where I just thought "Meh, what do I care?" And I kissed him back, but he was rough! He kept pulling my hair, I was almost tempted to pull his and see how he liked it.
And then Blondey came over and scowled and pulled me away, and then some blonde bird that he was with asked him what he was doing, so I ran away again, back into the safety of STF
And my night continued in that form, hiding from both, finding one or the other and dancing with them.
And then STF decided that he'd had enough of watching me get groped and kissed and decided that he was taking me home, so me and N and him jumped in a cab and went back to theirs.
Where I snuggled into an armchair with N and listened to one of those drunken, rambling tales that could be summed up in 3 sentances at the most, only when you're drunk take about 20 minutes to tell.
And while I waited for MH to come collect me STF went to make his bed and then N got all touchy-feely, which while nice, isnt what I expect from my mates so had to put a stop to that to and we just cuddled for ages until I finally got picked up, and after a brief run through of my night with giggles and drunken over exaggeration I went to bed and indulged in some of my favourite drunken texting!
Today I woke early, after about 4 hours sleep and headed back to Our Beloved Friary for dinner with MH, N, STF and meeting I of I and C fame.
And now I'm home and its all go here! Mother has had a row over Nanny with Uncle J which resulted in dramatic tears from here and "I wish you dad was here!" type outbursts.
So I tried to comfort her and now I'm all up to date! Yay!

I've won a holiday!

Well Mother did, when we came back from Ireland, we had to get the coach part way and filled in one of those customer service surveys about how to improve their services.
So we did and thought no more of it, then tonight she gets a phonecall from Nat Express saying how we've won a holiday for 4!
So very excited she goes and calls the freephone number and quotes her code down the phone to them.
Now here's the bad part and how our luck is always bad. Apparently its a holiday for 4 and seeing as Mother automatically ticked the option for there is 4 members in our family they now claim we cant have this holiday.
She asked if it was possible for us to bring someone else in, and the horribly embarrassed woman on the phone says no.
So she repeats that we're now in possession of a box of ashes rather than a real Daddy and that shes willing to being that along in order to be the 4th person but the woman still says no.

I'm just gonna pop an email along to customer services now asking exactly why we cant have that holiday.
And I'm off to Derby tomorrow, so I shall see you all when I get home.
Be Good!

My friend H2 has had her baby!
Its a boy, it was actually born on the 2nd of this month at 1.03pm after a whopping 22 hours in labour, and weighed 6lb and 3 and a half ounces, which I am assured is a good weight.
I'm going to see it at the weekend, but they've assured me I dont need to hold it, say good things about it or generally comment at all (but I did buy it a toy mouse!) and whilst there I shall be celebrating 5 years since being dumped in my first halls of residence where my Dad cornered MH in the kitchen, while she was putting away her cornflakes and demanded that she look after me.
Speaking of MH, she's in fear of failing her Disseratation and in doing so, also failing her Masters. Apparently she forgot to properly reference something in it and they're doing her on plagurism, with a big ass meeting in a week or two, but its not looking hopeful.

People let you down, I think I was 8 when I first realised that, that you can't trust them.
When I was eight I first heard my Mother say to her friend that if she'd had the Brat first she'd never have bothered with another child.
I remember that the way I've heard it many, many times in the past. I suppose its why I find it hard to talk to people, but in the years that follow I've seen it, many people I've called friends, family, they do something to let you down, and you realise you can't trust them. And then you get so paranoid you imagine slights, hates and you chalk it up to it being you. Something about you being wrong.
You accept it.

But yet it still gets to you. After Dad died we had hundreds of offers, people promise to look after you, to not abandon you, but they do. His best friend, the one he'd known since he was 6 years old, the one who promised, crying to look after us. We've never heard from them and when we ring them they claim they're busy.

I went to the pub last night down at the Standard and I saw two lads I had known, for about 8 or 9 years. They and their family were pretty good friends of ours , When Dad got sick the first time, they were good to us, they were good to us when we were poor and brought us food parcels.
When he got sick the second time, they distanced themselves but when he got well again they were back to us, as if nothing had happened.
When we found out he was terminally ill. They fully dropped us, they'd not respond to phone calls, they'd pretend to be out when we went round, they crossed the road to avoid us on the street. As if we were fucking infectious.
I could go on for ages about how they "claimed they couldnt cope with the illness" and all that bullshit.
I saw the two lads in the pub last night, I made an effort, cos I'm not rude like them, I was pretty drunk, I waved and smiled hi and the bastards turned their backs on me.
Needless to say I was fucking furious. And the bastards left the pub before I could really work myself into a frenzy.
Funny how people you think you can rely on, seem to let you down.

my drunken Albanian man occured on the night bus home after meeting Flashy and Spins, I may have mentioned it then, on my account of the night.
But basically I passed out on the back seat of the bus and woke up at one point to see some Albanian man trying to get me to go back to his place. I kept shaking my head, but he was intent on getting me back to his place and then I think I passed out again, but I know I never got off the bus and he was gone by the time I got home.

Today we had some spiny crabs added to our ray pool, they're fucking big bastards. One of them is clearly a bit stroppy, one of the rays drifted over to say Hello and he rapped him sharply on the head a couple of times with his claw hand and the ray swam off very cross and with a headache!

which leads us on to Fridays Fish Of The Week!



SeaHorses!
(I'm gonna recylce parts of my SeaHorse talk for this!!)
Obviously everyone knows Seahorses are actually fish, not horses, and that its the Dad that carries the babies, that Mum places in his pouch. Around 200 babies and he looks after them for I suppose about 2-4 weeks depending on the species and then he gives birth and they all swim off happily.
And whats really cute is that they mate for life, and they lead mostly seperate lives during the day but they always spend the night together and then in the morning have a little seahorse dance before going off to do their seahorsey thing.
Sadly however, out of the 33 known species over 20 are already under threat and population number have declined about 25-50% in 5 years alone, and its also thought that 20 million are caught every year for use in the Chinese medicine and the pet trade.
And a final shocking statistic for you is that in 2002 the volume of confiscated dried dead seahorses reached 70 tonnes which works out as about 24.5 million individuals!

So last night!

I went round to visit Welshy last night and sample the delights of his Student Union bar, it was a load cooler than our one was!
There was some sports and societys night going on so it was filled with crazy drunken girls and people in rugby shirts. We compared scars, a bit like that scene from Jaws.
And then I decided to pull my sock off and put my foot on the table to present the scar that The Brat gave me after dropping a bottle of wine on my foot.
so there was lots of drinking, lots of very nice looking sports people about and some impressive projectile Vomiting from an afro-haired man that put the girl from The Exorist to shame, that I was unfortunate enough to witness, after several drinks there, we considered our options.
Getting across London at night isn't something I'm keen on, especially after the crazed Albanian man on the night I met Flash and Spins.
So at closing time we considered my options, luckly the Mothership is away till Monday so I knew I wasn't going to have a panicked phonecall when I wasnt in by midnight.
So we decided to head to the student union Cheesy club night and have a few more drinks and then make a decision.
But it was cheese! So I pointed Welshy in the way of the dancefloor and once I got a few shots down him, he loosened up and impressed with some very flexible and funky dancing.
And then it was the end of the night and 2am, so we retreated to his room to check out the transport for London website and discovered that I could get home via three buses, two of which stopped in god knows where and in my merrily inebriated state it was a bad idea me heading somewhere I didnt know.
Indeed thats normally a bad idea when I'm sober and in daylight! So we made the rational decision for me to stay at Welshys and we curled up top-to-tail on his bed and passed out, well he did, I lay and listened to him snore for a bit.
And then it was 9am and I had to be off and away home to prepare for work, only as I'd gone out in contacts, and I'd taken them out as I'm paranoid about sleeping in them, in case "somehow" they end up at the back of my eyeball.
So cold, mildly ill from the shots I'd drunk I made my way partially blind across London, got changed, popped on here and then went to work!
I'm tired now!

Fuck me, just got in from a night out.
why do I drink shots? I know I always end up feeling bad afterwards.
I have to be in work in one hour 40 minutes!
Yeah!

Full story later!

As you all probably know I'm not a girly kinda girl, my make up routine consists of brush teeth, brush hair go.
I'm very low maintaiance, and lazy.
I loathe shaving, its so fucking boring, and it takes so long, guys come on, imagine the whole shaving face boring routine and then times it by about a hundred, legs, arms and anywhere else that might need a trim up.
I hate it, its boring, so I leave it for as long as possible. Weeks and weeks until I start to resemble a yeti (to be fair though, It seems pointless shaving them in winter when no one sees my legs and if I have a night out planned then I'll do them then as well.)
So I'm always looking for ways to stop them growing and save me the hassle of shaving.
I tried those immac/veet cream things, that go on and then you wipe it off. I didnt have much luck with that, I'd have had less of a workout if I was sandpapering a whole room, so I tried again with some scrapy effort, and that worked kinda well, except it took great chunks of my skin with it, and then burned the rest (damn this sensitive skin)
So that leaves one option, and today I took the plunge and tried to wax them, it was partially sucessful, it didnt hurt as much as I thought it might (although this might be cos I cheated and shaved a few days prior)
However I've been left with a problem, I cant get the wax residue off my leg, I tried soap, I tried shampoo, I even really scraped the bottom of the barrel and used toothpaste (and my bros toothbrush - ssssh!) to try and remove it, but the damn stuff is stuck firm.
So I'm sitting here writing this, with half my jean leg firmly stuck and trapped to my leg.
I'm not looking forward to taking them off tonight, I think my jeans will rip and still remain attached to the wax attached to my leg.

Last Wednesday, we had a Top, Top Head Office guy come to our shop, it was supposedly to be a routine thing, but we all knew he had an ulterior motive, mainly the magical disappearance of stock somewhere between the delivery truck and the tills.
It basically was a "you're lying about the theft and we're gonna persecute you until we discover which one of our loyal staff are stealing from us"
Which worked well until Druggie Shoplifter No.1 came in, (I so wanna use their real names but fear what might happen if I do
Perhaps we'll go off onto a tangent and I'll make a new section on the Who's who bit describing my nutter customers)
But from now on we'll call him POB, as they are his initials.
Anyhoo! while Mr Suspicious Head Office was down on Wednesday POB came into our shop and his little druggy filled eyes lit up at the sight of the shampoos (normally we have to hide them away as they are the number one target for getting stolen, but cos of the visit everything had to be out)
And he promptly put three in his coat.
Big Boss Lady spotted him out of the corner of her eye as she stood getting chastised by Mr Head Office and went after him.
anyway, this was enough to convince him, that hey, Woolwich, home of the Benefit Cheat, Druggie and Pound shops is perhaps not filled with the kinda people who will look in a shop and leave without stealing.
So we got CCTV installed today, which has fascinated me immensely, no longer will I have to worry about being left alone and attacked by a shoplifter (again) and being found in a pool of blood, by the next customer who will see my mangled body, calmly step over it, and help themselves to some echineacea.
Also and more exciting, when I quizzed the CCTV man, he said I can install an arial and tune in normal TV!
Why didnt we have this during the World cup?!!!