So, do you tell them the dress is hideous or....

Here's a question; would you rather I was:

a) The kind of friend who tells you exactly what they think when asked an opinion, the kind of person who, when in discussion, says what they think no matter how much it clashes with your point of view.

or

b) The kind of friend who tells you that yes, you are right, and you want me to tell you that you are right, so that is what I am doing, you are right.

I think that most people, when asked that question, would go for A, but a lot would secretly like B.

So what does that mean? Or is it a matter of deciding what kind of friend you should be according to the situation? I'm friend A, I always have been, I can't just agree with a person so as not to upset them, I've definitely lost friends in the past because of this, but I like to think the friends I have are real friends, no one I know would think of me as a sycophant and I wouldn't want to be one.

But does that breed resentment and tension? Does it mean that conversation are avoided and opinions are unspoken? Do my friends appreciate my candor, or dislike it?

I used to put my friends into categories, person A was the person to talk to if I needed to wail and be told that yes, my life was SO VERY DIFFICULT, person B was the person to talk to if I needed a slap in the face and told to pull myself together, nothing is ever that bad you big drama queen, and person C was the person who said who knows? let's get ice cream!

I like to think I could be all of those things, that I could read a person, decide what they needed at that moment and deliver, but it's very difficult over the wires, miles away from that person. Email can be so cold, and my instinct to be honest and plain can be translated at the other end as argumentative and uncaring.

Maybe I should be person C, ice cream never upset anybody.

Actually ice cream would possibly upset a diabetic, but I could suggest a fun fair or something.

Taking the piss

I get the renewal quote for my car insurance, and it is ridiculous, it is marginally less than last year but as I haven't claimed anything in the last 12 months I find this incredibly annoying.

I use a popular website which everyone remembers because of the seemingly compulsory brain melting advert and manage to get a new, lower quote. I call my existing insurers, they go off to have a discussion (for 'discussion' read 'man who answered the phone probably clicked on the button under my name on his screen that says 'cheaper quote for if she phones having shopped around and found it elsewhere'') and come back having beaten my new quote.

So WHY, can I not have it that cheap in the FIRST PLACE?! I've just wasted 20 minutes that I could have wasted looking for shoes!!

2nd worst dream I've ever had

The worst dream I ever had was when I was 6, I can remember it as clearly as if it was last night, I'm in a large house and I walk into a bathroom, where I see my father holding my sister who is a baby, she is very still and covered in blood, there is a knife on the floor, he sees me, he drops my sister in the sink, picks up the knife and begins to walk towards me. I run out of the room and into a bedroom where I see my grandmother (mum's side), I tell her she has to come with me, that Daddy's a bad man, she says that it's too late, that she's already dead and turns away from me. I run out of the room and see my grandfather hanging from a rope attached to something on the ceiling. My mother is standing at the top of the stairs holding a roll of carpet, it begins to unroll down the staircase and when it gets to the bottom I see that my grandmother was inside it, her face is blue. I run to the door, open it and run down the road as fast as I can, then I woke up screaming.

I know exactly where this dream came from, my maternal grandparents passed away (completely natural causes I should add) when I was 3 (grandfather) and when I was 5 (grandmother). My mother worked nights and had fallen asleep on the sofa one evening before dad was home from work, I was 6 and took full advantage of the situation, watching TV until about 10pm, feeling oh so grown up, I think I thought there would be lots more children's TV that I was missing by being sent to bed, unfortunately I saw a holocaust documentary and when my father got home he found me sitting on the carpet transfixed by these horrendous images on the TV, sobbing.

Watching horrible documentary about people being murdered + only dead people my 6 year old self knew about = dream about murdered grandparents. Quite why my father was the Michael Myers of my dream I don't know...

So last night I had a similar dream, except this one ended with me sitting on a bed in a hotel (weird that), being attacked by Liz, who was trying to smash a pint glass over my head while shouting "fucker!". I woke up screaming when she had managed to smash the glass and was trying to stab me in the eye with a pointy shard.

Death by pint glass, I have NO idea where that came from. Perhaps I have had a row with Liz and it was so traumatic that my brain has erased it from my memory, I am 98% sure that hasn't happened though... (got to allow 2% for possible mental tendancy's, I could be a secret psycho, do psycho's know they are psycho's?) perhaps it's because I haven't spoken to Liz in a week or so and I was thinking about that, and perhaps I am afraid of being murdered? Put the two together and I have a dream about being murdered by Liz.....? Nope, that doesn't make any sense.

I do know that my screaming also woke up the man in the room next to mine who knocked on my door at 3.34am to make sure I was ok.

I think I much prefer dreams about Demi Moore, Matthew Woodward, and jet ski's.

And another thing!

Just because I signed up to the Anya Hindmarch newsletter so that I could find out when the 'I am not a plastic bag' bag was available, doesn't mean I want to know about everything that Anya Hindmarch does. The emails that come in might aswell say, subject: YOU CAN'T BUY ANY OF THIS STUFF BECAUSE IT COSTS THOUSANDS OF POUNDS.

I didn't even get a 'I am not a plastic bag' bag, Sainsbury's in Northfield ran out, not that I've seen anyone in Northfield carrying said stylish and yet environmentally friendly bag.

Scum.

Plastic bag carrying scum!

grumble grumble grumble....

Two things I always wanted:

1. An office of my own, with my name on the door and a pretty view.
2. A super great smart phone pda type thingummy so I could pick up emails/check stuff and generally be touch with everything all the time.

Two things which are hugely over-rated:

1. Having an office of your own with your name on the door and a pretty view, it means that:
a) people know where you are, and they come and find you.
b) the rest of the time you're just in a room on your own, and that's not fun.
c) the pretty view turns out to be code for 'can't open the window because the air outside smells of manure'.

2. A super great smart phone pda type thingummy that means you can pick up emails/check stuff and generally be touch with everything all the time, because:
a) You're in touch with everything, all the time, whoever though that would be a good idea?! When my boss sends me emails at 7.20pm on a Saturday, I know about it, when my boss sends me emails at 1.30am on a Tuesday, I KNOW ABOUT IT.
b) when you do receive an email, and you're at your desk, your phone beeps, and then your PC beeps, giving you the distinct impression that the technology in the room is shouting at you.
c) And then, because of all the sodding applications on the bloody phone, it runs out of battery power roughly 20 minutes after you've charged it.

Having a miserable afternoon, can you tell?

When sleep is not enough

Last week I lost my Sat Nav, I realised I had lost it when the M40 was closed and I had to use a map, A MAP, to get home, 4 hours later and I was like a refried bean, grey and mushy. I phoned the hotel I had stayed in last week and sure enough, someone had found it on the floor of the third floor corridor and handed it in. There are good people in the world still.

This week I lost my car key, I realised I had lost it when about to exit my hotel room this morning, I spent 20 minutes on the floor of the hotel room searching, only to be informed by the same receptionist who had given me back the Sat Nav that I had left it on the check in desk the previous evening.

She said I looked tired, I had a look in the mirror and yes, clearly the highlighter is no longer working, it needs a wing man, I must invest in some touche eclait and a hair cut, and I should drink more water.

Either that, or the parts of my brain that control not losing things, and the parts of my brain that control not looking 50 when you are 26, are conspiring against me. I'm not sure what touche eclait can do about that....

Dream

I'm in my house, there is a knock at the front door, I open it to discover Mr Woodward and Mr Dzeryn, Mr Woodward says "we're off, are you coming?", I say "yeah, sure!", I call to Glenn, "I'm off to Australia then!", we climb onto jet ski's in the ocean outside my house, Matt and Ant on one, me on another, Matt's jet ski doesn't really start and mine keeps sinking, we struggle on until we reach a small jetty. We climb onto the jetty and walk towards a small deli, Matt says "there's a great place we can go to for lunch, it sells plates of meat and rice", Demi Moore approaches, she tells us she knows somewhere great but we'll have to race her to get there, she shouts "race!" and we all run down a hill lined with little shops, we run past a sign that says "Welcome to Alaska", my alarm goes off and wakes me up. I am distraught that I cannot see the end of the dream.

30 seconds from mars, could you hurry up so you can get there? You are boring us.

I am in the car, I am listening to 30 seconds from Mars and the song that both Kerrang and Radio 1 are playing OBSESSIVELY. I am thinking that if someone had told me when I was 14 that the delelelelelelectable Jared Leto would front a band, and sing about being pained and tortured while staring meaningfully at the camera during the video, I would absolutely have come in my pants. What a combination, those eyes, that wailing, I was overly dramatic, oh that I had to wait so long for such a dream to come true.

As it is, I am 26, it is 6.40am and I am wishing the delelelelelelectable Jared Leto would shut the fuck up. How old is he now? 35? He needs to move on, that red car is long gone...

Left in the dark.

A family friend who you respect and like throws a party for an ailing relative, he's not sure if she'll make it to Christmas so he dresses up as Santa Claus and the family has an impromptu Chrsitmas Day celebration. He is bright, funny and generous.

Two weeks later he is walking home from work and, almost like a pause on the way, he throws himself off a bridge that sits over a dual carriageway during rush hour traffic. His body is identified by the cards in the wallet he didn't take out of his pocket. He leaves no explanation.

You think you have all the answers, that good or bad, life plods forward with few surprises. Then something explodes in the air, devastating the people you love the most, and you feel like you've been punched in the face.

Pride comes before a fall, I am living proof.

On Saturday I went shopping with my mother and I bought two suits, I spent the rest of the weekend on a mini 'get me' high, because the skirts were a size 12, the jackets were a size 10, and they were all half price.

I come to work this morning, all smug and feeling slim and confident in my new suit, it is dark blue, I have teamed it with a silvery grey wrap top, I feel stylish and professional, I walk into an early meeting, I sit next to a man wearing some kind of farmer outfit, I could be straight off the streets of New York City, Farmer Man leans towards me:

FM: New suit?

Me: Yes, yes it is.

FM: You've left the label on the sleave.

And of all the labels to leave on a suit jacket, it could have been 'Tailored by Next', it could have been 'size 10' (or as I would have wanted it to say "SIZE 10!!!!!"), but no, it said "machine washable". I sneaked out of the meeting early, locked my office door, and gave myself a talking to.

I'm remembering now when I worked at the college I was in prior to this one, I walked across an office full of women, sat down, and one of them came over and whispered "did you know the seam on your trousers is split?", and there it was, the seam had split all the way up my bum, exposing my bright pink knickers to an office full of the bitchiest women I have ever met.

Life lessons, never get too cocky, either your underwear will be exposed or everyone will see how you're trying to avoid dry cleaning.

and then I went to sleep naked in a field

I always wanted to call a post something like that, and now I can!

The chap I work with who had the medieval wedding had a party on Saturday night, so we took the new GIANT tent and had a brilliant time. Last time we camped it was considerably warmer, but I was freezing all night, so this time, we took an air bed, double sleeping bag, double duvet and four pillows. We also followed advice given to us by a couple of seasoned campers and, rather than the 14 layers I usually wear, we slept naked.... at 5am I had to get out of the tent for some air because I was so hot I couldn't breathe, bloody genius! Always get naked, I'm so glad there is a time when that rule can be applied!

I also tried something for the very first time...

I am debauched, I am like the Marquis De Sade, only without all the syphilis.