Or you’ll think I’m sneaking off to Vegas to get married.

But I’m not. I’m going to Switzerland to look at Christmas Markets. Yes of course really. Only for a few days, of course. I’m not sure it would be possible to look at Christmas markets for more than a few days. In fact I never though it was possible to look at Christmas markets for more than a few hours. I’m about to be proved very wrong.

Still, it really is beginning to feel a bit like Christmas, isn’t it? And you know how you can tell that for sure? Because ’tis the season is back again! Yes!

No idea what I’m talking about? That’s shocking. Go and read the archives. Go now! I will wait till you come back.

You’re back? Good. Right, now you’ve done that, you’ve also a daily treat coming from feeling listless, who has enlisted a different blogger to describe an important point in their 2005 every day in December. I have no idea who (apart from me, obviously) So bookmark that - who knows who’ll turn up?

Done that? Right. Go and read ‘Tis again. Then get everyone else to go and read it.

Hm. That should be about it, I think. I’m going to go and look at Christmas markets n… What? Vegas? Am I going to Vegas?

Well, I’m looking at your advice, and it’s pretty split, isn’t it? There’s the “go” team, the “shouldn’t go” team, and the “if I don’t get to go you don’t either” team.

And let’s face it, the nos have it. My beloved - only there for 4 days before jetting off again, it now seems - has been instructed to keep his eyes shut The Whole Time. We’ll go again. We’ll go again when I have gambling money. I mean spending money. I fucking hate being sensible, but here I go: I’m not going to Vegas, not this time. Maybe. No, no, no definitely no. Not going. Nu-uh.

Now go and read ‘Tis - I’ll be back in a few days.

xxx

Reasons I should go to Las Vegas

1. I’ve always wanted to go to Las Vegas. Always. Even before CSI, even before the surge of shows and films currently swirling around its neon mass, I have always, always wanted to go to Las Vegas.

2. If I do not go to Las Vegas, my beloved will be away for two weeks without me (before coming back for a week and then going away for another). This will make will make me grumpy.
3. If I can think of some excellent ideas, perhaps I can use the time as research and make some of the cost back by writing fabulous articles about it all.
4. I could take lots of photos
5. And watch people, all day.
6. I would walk around, marvelling at the lights and the sounds and the Vegasness.
7. I could sit in internet places and write and write and write here about it all.
8. It could be an exciting thing, it would be LittleRedBoat Does Vegas. You’d love it. I’d love it. Oh, god …
9. I’ve always, always wanted to go to Vegas.

Reasons I should not go to Las Vegas. Not even slightly, not even a bit

1. I cannot afford it.
2. If I’m honest, it’s partly my vile competitive streak. I have always wanted to go, and it will drive me insane if my beloved gets Vegas first. It will be “’snot fair” territory.
3. I cannot afford it, not really.
4. I can’t think of any world beating feature ideas, and am rather sure that the amount of hopeful writers emailing commissioning editors and saying “I want to go on holiday and can’t really afford it. Please help me finance my personal life with your publication” is slightly too many million for comfort.
5. It is dangerous. I went to Reno once with a couple of friends, at the end of a few months study in California. We were seriously running low on cash, and sat there playing slot machines for hours on end. I lost some, the won some, then lost some again. There came a point where my friends - being rational and not having so much of the addictive personalities - said
   ‘We should go and get something to eat‘
   ‘Nono, I’m fine here, I’m about to win, I can feel it‘
   ‘Oh come on Anna, I’m paying‘
   ‘Oh, ok, well, I’m not that hungry, but if you want to give me the money that you were going to spend on my dinner, I’ll meet you here when you’re done‘…

   Three hours inside a casino and I’d turned into a desperate Gollum-like figure with sunken eyes and knarled fingers only good for clinging onto quarters and things with bright flashing lights on them …my precioussssslotmachine etc. I have to say, I did quadruple our money by the end of the day, though.
   To $15.

6. I can think of other things I should probably spend the money on. Probably.
7. I will be a conference widow, wandering the streets alone all day. To be honest, I’m actually fine with this (see pictures, people watching, writing etc above). As long as someone else has my wallet, and gives me a daily allowance.
8. Though I rarely have the whim to wed, being in my land of dreams, I’d probably only walk around making the type of hideously unfunny jokes that only long-term girlfriends can make. “Perhaps we could get Married in the Little Chapel of Love! Elvis could conduct the ceremony! Hahahahaha! I’m KIDDING! Obviously! HAHAHAHAHA”
9. It’s at the wrong time. The flights are all still in the holiday period, or expensive for other reasons and we cannot, cannot afford it. Although, you know, maybe, possibly, if I just… Oh God, I want to go.

Arg.
Every morning in weeks I have woken up and said “No, I shouldn’t go”, every afternoon this turns into “Wannagowannagowannago - there MUST be a way, there must, there MUST”. And every evening, as I stare at the cheap flight sites and my online banking screen, I realise it again.

I’m not going to Vegas. Not this time around.

Although…

Oh hell on a stick. You know better than me - what should I do?

· My left foot is smaller than my right by a margin of around half a size.

This is a pain in the arse, although not literally. Unless I kick you, in which case it may be. But there is no reason for me to kick you, so let’s presume for the moment that it isn’t. Literal. Not ‘let’s presume it’s not half a size smaller’, because it is.

· I can’t decide whether the ‘Return from the Sun to Darkness Sads’ are better or worse than the ‘Missing the Sun and General Darkness Sads’ that I usually get.

· If anyone knows of a particularly incredible site for cheap flights to the US, can you tell me?

· It is cold. I have been quiet. These two are not, although I suppose might in some remote way be, related.

· I’ve always heard that there’s no such thing as a free minibar. Is this always the case? Because a hotel I’m booked into seems to be suggesting otherwise. Surely, SURELY there’s no such thing as a free minibar?

The alternative is simply madness.

· My left foot is smaller than my right by a margin of around half a size. This is a pain in the arse.

Although not literally.
It is a pain in the shoe, literally.

“This is your first time in Sri Lanka?”

Shane, the tour company representative with the nicest smile in the world, keeps turning around in his seat to ask perky questions as the car nudges its way out of the crowded airport car park.
He wasn’t driving, so it was alright.

“It’s very different, yes?”

We sat in the back of the car holding hands; the man who’d managed 3 hours of sleep in the last 36, and the woman who’d had none, both aware that we’d suddenly gained a collection of hours from somewhere, but neither sure where to put them. You could almost hear our brains folding and unfolding like floppy airline blankets as they tried to come up with witty, urbane and cuturally significant responses.

“Yes ’tis. S’different. Mmmm.”

Whoever had managed to speak would smile weakly, proud of the achievement, before their head rolled to the side, and their eyes flicked back to the window, soaking in the newness of outside.

“I tell you one thing is the same” Smiled Shane, “This will help you feel at home: Both the UK and Sri Lanka, both drive on the same side of the road!…”

While this was wonderfully well-intentioned suggestion, it was quickly shown, on at least two counts, to be wrong
a) Position of steering wheel has never done much on it’s own to assuage culture shock or home-sickness, in my experience, and
b) His statement seemed to suggest that in Sri Lanka there is such concept as ‘A Side of the Road’. Which, while doubtlessly true in theory and in law, is utter bollocks in practice.

Because there isn’t. The road is just the road. If you can see a space on The Road, you drive into it, no matter what ’side’ it’s on. Or that’s how it seems to work, anyway. It’s great.

One day we decided, we’re going to formulate a driving game based on the roads of Sri Lanka, and it’ll sell millions - surely nothing could beat the lightning responses, concentration and strategic planning required to get from A to B. Or even to Aandahalf or ‘Aandabit’. Plus you’d have to play the whole game while keeping one hand on the horn. Because you don’t get anywhere if you don’t use your horn.

I was alarmed at first - so much noise, so much parping and beeping and pooping and booping and nah-NEEnah-NAing - because in this country, when someone leans on the horn, it’s a declaration of war, a signal of the uncouth, the short-fused, the knobheaded.

But after a while, I realised, that wasn’t the intention of the horn at all. The horn was merely shouting “I’m HERE! LOOK! I’m OVERTAKING you! Let’s hope we don’t DIE! OK! I’ve OVERTAKEN you now!!! THANKS! Right, BYE THEN!!” It was more of a friendly courtesy than a warning or a grump.

On a corner, blind or otherwise, on a hill, in heavy traffic, light traffic, in rain, in fog, in darkness and light, if you don’t overtake, you’re a pussy and a fool, and that’s the end of it, it seems.

I liked it. I’m not a big car person (God, that would be terrifying, like Transformers or something), but it was an adventure. It was fun. All in all in all, we drove for about 27 hours with the same driver, in the same car - not on the way to the hotel, I mean, that would be ridiculous - but over the next week or so, and you know what, I only seriouslythought I was going to die about 16 times. Maybe 18.

The driver? Well, more of him later. But this was all about the road. The swerving. The beeping. The fact that, half way to the hotel on that first day leaning on my beloved’s shoulder by neccesity (sharp turn to the left), and wondering when the last time I was in a car seatbeltless was, I saw, overtaking a hairsbreadth from the window at the devil’s own speed, an enormous and rickety lorry. Before it braked sharply and disappeared behind us to avoid the 70kmph oncoming bus, I spotted, on the back, a sticker: “How’s my driving?” it asked.

‘It’s frankly insane’, I thought, ‘Just like everyone else.
‘Well done, you’ll go far.’

In my absence the normal rational reasonable amount of British health paranoia (running at around 85% of brain capacity in the average Briton) seems to have increased abnormally, to the point where people are being encouraged to kill each other rather than get ill, I think.

Yesterday, still feeling a little disoriented, I went grocery shopping and, on the way, moted a particularly terrifying example of incitement to vigilante healthcare.

There was a bus stop sized advertisement, and from far away, I could read the text, although not quite recognise the picture.

“KILL ALL FLU GERMS”

It said, or something else very like that. Then, in smaller writing just below;

“IT’S TIME FOR SELF DEFENCE”

Or, you know, something very similar. Then in even smaller writing - I was getting quite close now:

“Millions of germs must DIE!”

Or the like. Ah, I thought, having read this, this must be for some max strength flu powder. Oh, no, hang on, I could see a nozzle on the bottle in the picture attached, it must be some kind of nasal spray, a new one, possibly, because I didn’t recognise the colour of the packaging from any usual cold remed - OH MY GOD, IT’S BLEACH.

My Sweet Lord, this is appalling!

It’s mercenary, it’s terrible, it’s - I know we’re running short of Flu Vaccine, but are they actually suggesting we spray our flu-suffering freinds, colleagues, family - fellow bus passengers with common household bleach just in case they give us flu? Should I just carry around the contents of my under-sink cupboard so I can clean the living hell out of anyone who has the audacity to cough in my vicinity?

When I got home, there was another advert, on the television, advertising the medical benefits of yet another common household item. Some kind of anti-bacterial tissue, of all things, which promised to “Kill 99.9% of germs in the tissue“.

Well that’s all well and good, but come on, surely rounding them up is the difficult thing, is it not? I mean, they’re very little blighters, knowing that being in the tissue will kill them is one thing - getting them there is another. Maybe if we round them up with the bleach, and then coralle them into the tissue.

Oh fuck it, lets just bleach our fellow bus passengers, friends and family, anyone that dares sniffle. That’s clearly the most direct course of action. After all, it’s self defence. Millions of them MUST DIE.

Conventional wisdom may hold that it’s more fun to spend four hours in a mildewy bucket than your standard air travel facility, but I don’t care. When I’m flying anywhere; short haul, long haulI’m always at the airport 4 hours early, at least.

If you’re flying alone, it gives you time to sit and read and think, if you’re travelling with someone else, it’s extra time to talk and plan and, you know, drink or something. also, it ensures that you get a window seat. I do like to have a window seat. Sometimes I get a little funny when I can’t have a window seat.

Still, not having a window seat is never really a consideration, because I get to the airport four hours early, you see, so I always do. Get one. A window seat. Oh, god, sorry, the jetlag’s setting in again.

Anyway. So when the flights had been confirmed, I wrote down the times in my diary, and my beloved kept them in a special email in a special place. Then the tickets arrived and we checked the times before putting the tickets in the special ‘travel things’ folder.

How then, you could ask, did we almost manage to miss the plane?

Well, that’s a really good question.
But unfortunately on a subject so horribly embarrassing that we decided never ever to speak of these things again, so I’m afraid I won’t be able to answer it.

Oh alright then. I mean, I’ve started, so I should finish, right? Besides, anyone who’s read this before knows that a) I’m a moron sometimes and b) I eventually got to Sri Lanka anyway. So.

The flight we were aiming for was at 10.35pm. This was the time my beloved had engraved on his mind, and subsequently, it was the time engraved on mine. We left the house by half past four, and were in Terminal 4, Heathrow, by 6.20.

Checking the board, there was a flight to Colombo, a Sri Lankan Airlines one, in fact, but it wasn’t ours: the one on the board was at 9.25pm.

Our flight, you see, was at 10.35pm, so it must be a completely different flight. We were waiting, it seems, for the next in the hourly schedule of Sunday London-Colombo flights.

Obviously.

Well, the last flight on the check-in board was at 10.30pm, to Dubai or Lagos or somewhere (we didn’t want to go to either of those places), so we went to have a coffee until the board moved up and our flight appeared. We also went to Boots. To WH Smith, too. And to the Currency Exchange, and to the toilet, twice. Well, he did. I went once. Sorry, too much inforation.

Then we went to have another cup of coffee, and some olives, at a different coffee shop nearer to the check-in desks where the 9.25 flight was checking in, because we reckoned it was likely that when the 10.35 flight appeared on the monitors (and it had been an hour and a half by then, it had to appear there soon, surely…) then it would probably require us to check in at the same desk.

Funny though, no flights at all had appeared on the monitors after 10.30 at all. A little odd, but, you know, there was probably a back-up somewhere in the system, some flights over subscribed, some check-in staff helping out elsewhere. something… We might ask at the Sri Lankan Airlines desk, of course, about what time the check-in for the 10.35 was likely to open, but everytime we went over there there was a huge queue or the lady had disappeared somewhere important. So we waited, and drank our coffee, and looked bemusedly at the monitors, and ate olives.

Some time after 8, the long-hoped for 10.35 flight still not showing up on any monitor we could see, we thought to check the tickets.

And then, predictably, ran to the check-in.

“We’re here to check in for the 9.25 Colombo flight”
We said.
We’d been in the airport two hours already - and with another six minutes of monitor-watching, we could have missed our flight entirely.

“Is it possible to have a seat by the window?” I asked, stupidly.

“Oh no” said the disapproving, businesslike woman. “If you wanted a window seat, you would have had to have been here HOURS ago”

“I Was” I said.
“i was”.
And slowly, silently burst into tears.

Well, I *say* “slowly, silently”, I mean, “immediately, and squirting forth from the corners of my eyes like you’ve only seen before in cartoons”. I may also have said “Wah!”.
I get a bit stressed at times like this, any setback can be the catalyst to a wet, squirty “wah”ism.

But it was all fine. Of course. Two aisle seats, one behind the other so I could tap my beloved on the head whenever I wanted to, with legroom and all those things.

Still, in a way, it was a very good thing. We were predisastered, and nothing else, nothing at all, would go wrong for the rest of the holiday. Apart from the squits, rain, the excursion hotel room that smelled of wee, and prunelike elderly Europeans who arrived and stole all the sun-loungers, but apart from that, apart from that, and, well, maybe some other things, we were pre-disastered and nothing else could go wrong. Or so we thought.

But walking through security after check-in, we were torn between each being angry as all hell with ourselves and the other, and bursting out laughing at the sheer stupidity of us both.

And as neither came out of it well, and no one likes a story where everyone comes off the doofus especially when it’s them, twice over, we decided never, EVER to speak of it again.

Whoopses.

Elephants

Originally uploaded by anna pickard.

I don’t know where to start.

It was 13 days in Sri Lanka. Two weeks of exploring, and relaxing, and a quite substantial amount of lying around doing feck all in a pool. I realised I never said where I was sneaking off to before I sneck. Well, that was to where we snucked.

And of course there are lots of stories, and I was going to make a plan and be very organised, chronologically, or like some kind of series or something, but that never Ever works, when I try it.

So they’re just going to have to pour out in the messy kind of way that I think of them and then just keep dribbling out, bit by bit by bit, amongst the usual crap. Just like, you know, elephants, taking a bath or something.

No, not really like that at all. I was just trying to say something relevant to the photo. Um. Lookit! Heffalumps!

Just lovely to be home and that, but MY GOD, who let the pilot light go out?

What have you DONE?
It is too cold in this country. Fact.

Also, it’s not 5am, and I think it should be, and that is confusing me not a little.

Proper updates start tomorrow, or whatever day it isn’t today. Because I’m pretty sure it already is. Or should be. But isn’t. Or something.

I need my bed. And I need an extra duvet on it please.
I also needed to say hello, though.

Obviously. Hello.

My dear lovelies.

I’ve gone on holiday.
So I’m not here.

But you are here. Clearly. And since you’re here, why not stay for at least a little bit. See, there was going to be a guesty type arrangement, but that went wrong, so instead my incredibly gorgeous sister and terribly talented brother in law have helped me set up a little thing, you see, that sends you on a little journey into the past. Look! Click here…

Thing is, there are 4 and a bit years of archives, and I don’t know what you’ve read, and what you haven’t, and what you’ve forgotten. Hell, I’ve forgotten most of them, and I wrote the fucking things.

So the idea is this - go on a little voyage into the archive (yes, most of the randomly selected posts might read ‘Ooh, hangover’, but let’s get past that) a lot of the posts don’t have proper titles because of the move from blogger, and none of the posts have comments because of spam. But they’re worth reading, honestly.

So if you find something and you want to comment on it, then use the comment box on this post. It’ll probably turn out to be a pretty random affair, with people commenting on northern lights one minute and genetalia the next, but hell, it might inspire conversation. Maybe?

If you find a post that is actually worth reading, then why not leave a link to it in the comment box? It’ll save people having to plough through the hangover posts, anyway…

So please, settle in, make yourselves at home - why not get yourself a jumper and a cup of cocoa? Open up the comment box, click the button and comment on whatever you find when you get there. Or, you know, not. Go and read some of the lovely people on the old blogroll there, I’m easy, I don’t mind. I shall miss you, but will be back in a couple of weeks. With a tan.

Have a nice mid-November, and please stay and play a while. Seriously. Four and half years of archives. Do stay and play, oh do…

Ok. This is the pile currently sitting on the living room table:

Saramago - The Double
Things my mother never told me - Blake Morrison
Marc Acito - How I Paid For College
Kafka On The Shore - Haruki Murakami
David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas
Skinny Dip - Carl Hiaasen
Peter Fleming - One’s Company
My Name Is Red - Orhan Pamuk
Clare Sudbery - The Dying of Delight
Tristram Shandy - Lawrence Sterne
James Meek - The People’s Act of Love

Now, I’m not going to say which of those are mine and which of those belong to my beloved, and which are ones we both want to read, but I think there’s room there for a couple more books. It’s a two week holiday on a beach after all.

But that’s just the thing. It’s a beach holiday. These books? Well, I’m not sure, but they *might* be a little heavy. They might all be a little “good”, you know? A bit Booker-y, and in one case a little Nobelly. I’m half way through three of them already, to be fair. That’s how easy-reading Those bastards are.

So here’s what I need from you today (and my cold is mostly better, thank you, which is why I feel confident asking you another question, along with the fact that my gorgeous sister asked a similar question a while ago, with useful results):

I need some complete shit to read. Not utter, Utter shit, but, you know, something easy, glide-through, maybe crime, maybe not, maybe funny, but overall, it should be holiday reading.

There are only two restrictions:
a) nothing with an embossed high heel or handbag on the cover. We don’t do clit-lit.
b) if you even mention Dan Brown, I’m banning you.

Also, if you disapprove gravely of any of the books above, please say.

But please, please, recommend me some good, enjoyable holiday rubbish to read - otherwise I’m going out at lunchtime to buy Jonathan Coe’s biography of BS Johnson. And that’s a threat.

A lot of cooking happens in this flat, but not much of it is done by me.

This is not because our household subscribes to outmoded gender role stereotypes dating back to the second-wave new man movement of the late 1990s, oh no.

It is instead because I am bad at cooking. In fact, I might go as far as to say “very” bad.

I understand the concept well enough, don’t get me wrong.

THE CONCEPT:

No food - raw food - saucepans - heat - nice food - happy people

But the practice always turns out differently.

ANNA-COOKING, THE CONCEPT ACTUALISED:
No food - raw food - saucepans - heat - “series of random events” - “matter” - confused-but-full people.

.

And even though… Even though we had previously said that we would go out and do the going-outty thing for my beloved’s birthday, eat somewhere nice etc etc etc; even though I know full well that I’m pretty piffle at the whole food preparation palaver - I said that “for a treat” I would cook him dinner.

It had been a hard day, and a long day, and a mon day, and it was being a long London journey home for us both, so instead of trying to work out how and where to meet, I said I would pick up some ingredients and make something incredible and birthdayish with them.
Or something incredible.
Or perhaps just “something”.

Working in a pub at the age of 19 or so, a chef gave me a recipe for very simple, but very classy-sounding chicken.
Chicken in white wine sauce with shallots and something else and something else.
Etc.

You see, I think I remembered the first time I made it, but after that? Well, not so much. So it’s kind of a “throw things in and hope it ends up tasting a bit like it’s supposed to” affair.

Whatever “like it’s supposed to” actually tastes like. Luckily, no one I’ve ever made it for has a) known what it’s supposed to taste like or b) ever asked me to cook it again, so the issue has never come up.

Monday night, tea time:

Chicken chopped. Two breasts suddenly don’t look like very much. Chop another. Now with three chopped breasts, the amount of shallots don’t look enough. Dither. Shallots are fierce little fuckers.

Chop another three shallots, trying not to look directly at them for fear of eyes bleeding. Now sitting next to enlarged pile of shallots, chicken very little. Consider chopping a whole other chicken breast, then decide not to.

Chop half of other chicken breast instead. Put remaining half chicken breast in freezer. Realise this is pretty alarmingly pointless. Take it out and chop it. Ignore belittled shallot pile.

Try and remember whether there is meant to be garlic in this recipe. Realise this is a ridiculous line of thinking. There is meant to be garlic in every recipe! Hurrah for garlic!!!

Chop garlic happily.

Notice mushrooms. Chop mushrooms. Notice several other vegetables. Chop those. Vegetables are nice.

Onion in pan. Garlic in pan. Chicken in. Erm. Hang on. Pan too small. Start warming other pan. Everything moves to other pan. Hurrah! Spoon falls on floor while not looking. Spoon joins pan in washing up pile. New spoon. Mushrooms in pan. Everything going well!

New spoon falls out of pan, taking with it several food bits. Spoon in washing up, food bits in bin. New spoon!

Cover all ingredients with wine. Cover pan with lid. Leave for 30 seconds. When pan is noticably steaming, take the lid off to recieve face full of heated alcohol fumes! I am noticably steaming! Hurrah!

And so it goes on. Suddenly notice that even covering all the ingredients in a good layer of wine, I still seem to have most of a bottle left, which seems foolhardy. It will never keep. Pour two glasses, offer one to beloved. Congratulate myself on the suddden windfall of his refusal and amalgamate glasses. Toast the chicken. Drink the wine. Think about toast. Almonds! Almonds go with chicken! Add almonds.

Drink more wine.

Stand around kitchen being confused. I know I have been organised and boiled the water for the pasta, but cannot find the pasta pan.

Sorry - that might have read like I boiled the water IN the pan, but then somehow lost the pan with boiling water in it. I’m shit, but I’m not that shit.

Clarification: I know I have boiled the water in the kettle but couldn’t find the pan to transfer it into.

I dilly for a second about possibly throwing the pasta in the kettle before resuming my search for the pan. In my fluster, the new spoon, which I had placed, for once, on a nice little rest on the side rather than hanging precariously out of the pan as usual, gets knocked onto the floor. New spoon!

I cook enough pasta for the armed forces to be fed. All the armed forces. Of every country. Apart from the ones we don’t like, obviously. But for all the ones we DO like, it’s pasta all round!
Those bags are more generous and capatious than you think.

And I seem to be taking full advantage of that fact.

My portion control, it must be said, leaves something to be desired. Unless you desire pasta, in which case it provides plenty of it. Bear in mind I’m only using pasta because of that court order banning me from rice - remember the tragic Manchester long-grain avalanche of 1998? Yeah, sorry about that…

Refill glass. Empty it. Refill it.

Suddenly, I remember the forgotten pile other vegetables whim-chopped. Panic. Throw them in with the pasta. Lift lid off the bubbling wine thingo again. WAHEY!

Look at food properly, once alcohol cloud has dispersed (dispersed into face). Put creme fraiche in it. Put some more. Pepper pepper pepper. Find half a lemon. Can’t recall it being chopped for this recipe, but see no harm in showing it some love. Put lemon juice in. Pepper pepper pepper.

Drink wine.

More tarragon. I know I didn’t mention the tarragon before. Let’s just take it for granted that there are several ingredients I haven’t mentioned before, for brevity’s sake. Yeah, I know.

Fail to find vessels big enough for food matter. Matter persuaded, mob style, to fit into available vessels.

Beloved presented with towering mass of Chicken and Pasta and Fungi Randomness. He eats it all. I eat it all.

It’s lovely. If a bit, you know, random.

Somewhere far away, kitchenward, I hear a spoon falling.

Hello, good morning, cough.

I need your help.

It is said that without the existence of the common cold, some percentage of the world would not understand the concept of suffering. And I think that:
a) That’s very interesting and
b) whoever said that must have had this exact cold, oh the suffering etc.

So I need help in the form of medical advice, and no, not as in “go to the doctor”, because:
a) I don’t believe in going to the doctor with a cold and
b) I hate the doctor.

Does anyone have any surefire gets-rid-of-colds advice? Because I need to get rid of this cold, and also Now. I have (looks by side of bed)
1 bag of clementines,
1 bottle cough syrup (non-drowsy, boo),
1 packet sucky-sweets
1 packet lemsip max-strength,
1 packet of Lemsip-spin-off sinus tablets that I’m not sure work at all and
a roll of toilet paper for my nose.

I am willing to stop any and all of these (apart from the bog-roll, because that could get really messy), if anyone can tell me something - anything - that works. I don’t care if it’s herbal, pharmacutical, outlandish or illegal; I can’t be arsed with this cold, I need it gone, and I’m very, very, Very grumpy about it.

Please? Don’t you have any cures-your-grandmother-told-you floating around somewhere? Or is it just a case of knocking back the Lemsips and riding this snotwave out? Oh please not that.

Help me. Cure my common cold.

Sorry, “please” (I forgot to say please).

Please cure my common cold. Now. Please.

*Snuffle*.

The whole weekend was spent saying “Oooooh! Just think where we’ll be this time next week!”

Unfortunately, the answer was always “We’ll be here, Anna. We’ll still be here, possibly packing”

Now we’re in the actual countdown to holiday things, now I kind of feel like we’re possibly going and maybe really quite soon - we’ve moved through the “where will be be this time next week?” “On a plane”, “And now?” “Still on a plane” stage, and this time next week we will actually BE somewhere. But what will be here? Hm. What do the cool kids do with *their* blogs when they go on holiday?

They probably take their computers. They’re so cool.

Not me though. If I was cool I wouldn’t suddenly be struck down with a really fierce nasty cold complete with exploding sinuses and elephant sitting on chest.

I swear, if it’s not better by lunchtime tomorrow, I’m going to be finding someone’s arse to kick over the matter, and then kicking it.

In the meantime, I shall continue my snuffling worry over how to stop people going away while I am holidaying.

Hm
*snuffle*

*cough*.

For reasons, yesterday, I listened to a recording of mice singing.
Several times.
By the severalth time, I was a bit of a gibbering wreck, and I in no small part blame this for my sinuses exploding and leading to a snotandphlegm-flavoured meltdown this morning.

If you think your constitution can stand it, however, or if you are curious as to what hades sounds like, you can find samples in this story here.

*shudder*