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WHY are the months in my blog archive suddenly in Italian? Or it might be Spanish. The point is, I do not understand.

All bets are off

Damn you Albert Square! (shakes fist)

I had a bet with a mate that EastEnders wouldn't even acknowledge the smoking ban. I am now a tenner poorer.

While I admire this up to date, on the ball with current affairs approach to storylines, I'd much rather the behind the scenes sorts dedicated their efforts to buying Libby a decent bra.

Dinner party from hell

Miss Hacksaw: Afternoon

K: Oh, hullo. Weren’t you meant to be here about forty minutes ago?

MH: Yeah, sorry. I woke up late and then started watching Hollyoaks, and then had to have a deep bath with lots of soothing balms and lotions to stop all the hate, and then had to get newspapers…

K: Ooh, what ones?

MH: The Observer, for the food magazine only. They’ve a special on Chinese food.

K: Oh excellent. I bought the Sunday Mirror and feel a bit sick as a result.

MH: Why?

K: The zebra print is back.

MH: Oh hell, really? Actually, so’s the pantsuit, I meant to tell you.

K: The what? Those…all in one things from the 80s? That make going for a piss a nightmare?

MH: Oh yes. I’m appalled, they’re almost as bad as the body.

K: Oh ewww, the body. That by law had to be work with really high waisted jeans so that nobody would see the fact you were wearing an all in one bodysuit.

MH: Ugh, high waists. Aren’t they back as well now?

K: Probably. It’ll be legwarmers and kilts next.

MH: “Designed especially for Topshop by Kate Moss”, I’d imagine. Oof. What else is in the Mirror?

K: Gail Porter.

MH: Didn’t her hair grow back?

K: Yes, but it all fell out again.

MH: Harsh. What’s she got to say for herself?

K: She’s quite entertaining actually. They’ve thrown her a question about who she’d have at her nightmare dinner party.

MH: Oh wicked! I can do that game!

K: As opposed to not being able to do…other games?

MH: I had to ban myself from playing Fantasy Dinner Party last year.

K: ……Okay.

MH: No, seriously. After the Steve Irwin incident.

K: The what?

MH: Well, we were in the pub, and Fantasy Dinner Party came up, and Steve Irwin was on mine. And then the next day he died. And I had to quit playing Fantasy Dinner Party, because of all the subsequent fears for Kiefer and whatnot. However, Nightmare Dinner Party is do-able, because I really don’t care very much if Julia Roberts is speared by a stingray.

K: Oh, Julia. How we dislike thee. Apart from in Pretty Woman, where you’re actually quite cool although not half as cool as your ho mate. What is it about her we hate so much though?

MH: The obligatory grinning scene in every film she’s done ever, apart from Flatliners where she was all beaky and earnest.

K: Ugh, good call. She’s in. Okay, who else?

MH: Davina McCall. Which I know is well controversial and I’m the only person in the entire world doesn’t like her, but she’d spend all the time SHOUTING or telling other guests what’s happening in the kitchen in that Big Brother conspiratual tone. “It. Is. 7.30pm. The guests. Have been here. For thirty minutes. The starter. Is imminent.”

K: Ha! And when another guest went for a piss, she’d collar them outside the loo to get their bitchy opinions on everyone else in the house. “So. Julia. What did you really think of Jeremy Kyle? LET’S SEE YOUR BEST MOMENTS!”

MH: “Ooh, Sleeping With The Enemy!” Yeah, or not. Jeremy Kyle totally belongs in dinner party hell though.

K: Oh my God it’d be horrendous. Someone would say something fairly standard about how their sister once took coke at Chinawhite and he’d be straight down their throats. “I can’t believe you KNOW she’s taking it and you’re not doing a THING about it!” “Er, it was ten years ago. Nobody goes to Chinawhite anymore, twat.” “Listen to me! LISTEN! To me! You’re irresponsible, you’re a disgrace! That’s a FACT!”
MH: And then Tom Cruise takes him into a corner and tries to calm him down with some calming and not-at-all-sinister Scientology chat.

K: Oh my God. The Cruise is the ULTIMATE nightmare dinner party guest. First of all he’d turn up and do The Grin at everyone –

MH: Gah, the pleased-with-oneself side-smile as patented in Cocktail?

K: Exactly that. Then he’d be sniffing round the entire house checking that you hadn’t stashed a camera or a 3am Girl in the corner or whatever. Then he’d haul in Katie Holmes, stash her on the sofa with a few tomes of L. Ron’s and prop her up with all your cushions to stop her lurching to the side like the blow up doll in Alan Partridge. And then he’d bore the arse off everyone for three hours trying to convert them all to Scientology.

MH: It’s enough to almost make you feel sorry for them. Except Dubya.

K: Ha! Who’d just be sat at the head of the table with half a pretzel hanging out of his mouth, looking cross eyed at Cruise. “Shut him up. Put the off button…er…on.”

MH: Christ, what a motley crew. What are the odds on me killing them all within twenty minutes?

K: I’ll give you a tenner at two to one.

MH: Done.

Someone kill me now.

I just cried at The Horse Whisperer.

Either I'm obscenely premenstrual or I just need a good slap.

I love....

...the fact that Patrick in EastEnders gets turned on by chicken.

I don't love the fact that I write so frequently about EastEnders that I have had to give it its own label.

For Clare....

GO BAGGIES!

Get me a ticket for Wembley and I'll even buy something in navy.

Four! Four chocolate souffles! Ah ah ah

I love Delia Smith!

While I love cooking, and get a great amount of pleasure out of dicking around in the kitchen all day whipping up treats for those nearest and dearest, it is rare I actually make a great effort. During the week the Hubbo and I are kings of the easily-knocked-up dish such as meatballs and tomato sauce, or steak, or homemade Gourmet Burger Kitchen style burgers (and other dishes that do occasionally involve non-red meat, not that you'd believe it from that list). At weekends we generally have a takeaway on a Friday, eat out on the Saturday, and on the Sunday we'll whip up a roast - a meal that is very much the Hubbo's forte, while I end up going over the road to buy the Ben & Jerry's and Aunt Bessie's Yorkshire puds after I've inevitably cocked up the attempted homemade ones.

However, occasionally I'll invite people over for dinner and become obsessed with turning out a meal of champions. The first instance of this was New Year 2005, when we decided we were all far too old to go gallivanting about London trying to get into a pub that wasn't full of vomiting teenagers and so invited a gang over for dinner and a few buckets of champagne instead. I cooked for twelve hours solid, and against all bets managed to turn out a slow roasted pork belly, as well as stuffed aubergines for the token vegetarian. Since then, when people come over I always try to do something new - something John and Greg off Masterchef would be horrified at I imagine. Still if it goes wrong there's always the pizza menu, and nobody looks like a tit apart from me.

We had the same gang over for Eurovision on Saturday night - because Eurovision isn't tolerable unless you have a house full of drunk people screaming with laughter at the Ukranian Su Pollard-esque act. Plus, we didn't want a repeat of last year, when the Hubbo and I watched it alone and sober and nearly split up because I wanted to vote for someone other than Lordi.

The main course was kept fairly simple - chicken and ham pie out of Nigella's Feast. Worked a treat - apart from the fact that the pastry I made according to her specifications was wrong, wrong, wrong. Luckily I had half a pack of puff pastry left over from K's vegetarian mushroom pie that I'd made her specially (veg cookery is not a talent of mine, and mushrooms are one of the only vegetables I can cook without fucking them up royally, so she got a pie to herself. I could have made a massive mushroom pie for all, but the Hubbo's allergic to fungus (ha! I love that word), and I love chicken pie anyway) so I used that. It looked a bit stretched, but the glory of puff pastry is that after five minutes in the oven it looks like nothing else on earth anyway, so it didn't really matter. Plus, I made individual pies for each person, and there's nothing quite as fun as One's Own Pie.

The pud was a slightly different matter. I always go a bit balls out on pudding, mainly because I don't really eat dairy produce and this is the only way I ever get to have fun with cream and eggs.

Because of the zero expertise I have in the pudding zone, a souffle may have been a bit above and beyond what I was capable of. However, I'd bought some ramekins that morning from the pound shop, and a souffle in a ramekin is one of the prettiest desserts ever, even if you can't eat it because the double cream will bloat you up for three days and give you hives. Also, in the clean up we'd had on Saturday morning I unearthed the Christmas Sainsburys magazine which included a Delia recipe for chocolate rum souffles which according to her, are "well behaved". After the Nigella pastry fiasco I was somewhat concerned that I'd end up just covered in whipped egg white and collapsed spongy stuff and sending someone off to Costcutter to buy a slab of Dairy Milk; but you never know unless you try, and I trust Delia a lot more than Nigella anyway (you'd never get Delia licking the fish slice, or whatever. Ew, that sounded more dirty than it should have done.)

They worked. All four (four! Chocolate souffles! Ah ah...okay, got to quit it with the Count japes) rose perfectly, didn't sink into themselves when I dusted them with icing sugar, and weren't just raw eggy chocolate underneath. Brilliant. There's nothing quite like the pleased feeling you get watching four people hoover up something you've put effort into, especially when you were convinced it was going to go horribly wrong. Especially when you can't have any of the pudding, and so get to finish off the bottle of rum by yourself instead.

Ms. Baroque knows the score

Har har. I thought I was the only one who found that Nurofen works best when washed down with Diet Coke. I am regularly told off for this in the office (obviously the reasons for taking said Nurofen are stressed-migraine and not alcohol induced, you understand) and was starting to think that perhaps it wasn't the acest of all ideas.

However, Ms Baroque is on my side.

I knew I was right.

Heh

Someone got to this website by typing into Google "toms mum has sweaty beef curtains".

I'm not sure who should be more embarrassed by this fact, them or me.

Bradley Branning is a genius

For years, medical professionals have been trying to cure the phenomenon that is man-flu. Lemsips, Strepsils and Night Nurse have all failed the test. Doctors all over the globe scratch their heads and try to come up with a solution.

Fear not! As ever, EastEnders has come up with the answer, thanks to the flushed-of-face, red-of-hair buffoon that is Bradley Branning.

And that answer seems to be.....Haribo. Ugh.

In other EastEnders news, I see that Polish builders have finally migrated their way from Chiswick to Walford. Polish builders + Ian Beale = comedy genius.

In non-television related news, I will write a proper entry soon. The violent London entry went on hiatus, then Blogger ate it and I can't quite get the new version to come right. In the meantime, stay tuned for more soap-related tosh and a rant about Donald Trump's hair.

NOOOOOOOOO!

Dammit!

I was just in the middle of writing a long, ranting and rather scaremongering entry about various violent run-ins with London nutters I've had in the last two weeks or so; when I had to save it swiftly and start a new one.

In the last post I wrote, which was an admittedly lame one in anyone's book, I was moaning on about the snapping turtle song that accompanies the seventeen Orange ads I see each day (yeah, I finally figured out what the ad was for. Or rather, Google did) and comforting myself with the fact that at least I didn't have the sodding Frosties 'Its gonna taste great!' jingle in my head.

Now, not so much. After the international outcry about the irritance factor of said advert ("I can hear the sound of Frosties hittin' me plaaaate!") I thought that whatever besuited ad executive who has the misfortune to hold the Kelloggs account and was stupid enough to come up with this had been fired, Alan Sugar style ("you've gone from anchor to wanker"), but no.

There's a new damn Frosties advert. It uses the same jingle. It makes me want to cry.

Come back, snapping turtle. All is forgiven.

"Even ladies with per-so-na-lised number plates!" Shut up, Kelloggs.

Hey there little snapping turtle...

I hate it when advert songs or jingles get stuck in your head. I woke up this morning with the snapping turtle song in my head, and it has refused to go away all damn day. I've tried everything I can think of to get it to leave - half an hour of The Smiths on the bus on the way to work; the performance of a Take That medley in my lunch hour with C; sticking MTV on in the office at 5 after the phones went on voicemail. Did it work? Did it heck. The snapping turtle is the boss of me.

It wouldn't be quite so bad if I could remember what the hell the advert was for in the first place. Considering the fact that said advert is seemingly on TV non-stop; isn't it pretty poor that the only thing I can remember about it is the song?

Still, it could be worse. I could have the Frosties 'It's gonna taste great!' jingle in my head. Grrrrrr.

How very dare you

When I used to live in Shepherds Bush, there was a selection of characters you got to know and love. The man in the motorised wheelchair who would drink in O'Neills religiously every Sunday from 2 till 4. The bouncer at the Walkabout who I'm sure was Ian Wright. The hobos on the bench on the green. And a little, white haired old lady who spent her days wandering up and down Shepherds Bush Road hissing and doling out venomous insults to anyone whose jib she didn't like the cut of.

The first time I saw her, she was standing about by a bus stop, leaning on her walking stick and looking as innocent as any other five foot nothing old lady.

I heard her mutter something under her breath; as most of us are wont to do if waiting for a bus at rush hour and none are on the horizon.

BIG SIGH.

Mutter.

BIGGER SIGH.

Mutter mutter ohmygod you crazy woman what the hell are you doing?!

Displaying a remarkable amount of agility for a woman who was in all likelihood born before World War I started, she had leapt forward and started jamming a group of 14 year old girls in the kidneys with her walking stick.

"I asked you the fucking time! Have some fucking respect!"

Crikey.

The next time I saw her I was pottering home down that road after an afternoon beer or two. I found myself behind her, and as the road was narrow and she had that charming trait of weaving all over the damn pavement so I couldn't get past without getting in the road and overtaking her or leapfrogging, I contented myself with ambling home slowly behind her.

A portly chap was coming down the road towards us. He stood aside to let her and I pass, and as she walked past him he smiled at her - the sort of smile you give someone when you're anticipating a thank-you of some sort.

Tap, tap, tap. Went the walking stick on the pavement.

Plod, plod, plod. Goes me behind her, starting to wonder if I'll ever get home to attend to a desperately busting bladder because if I have a beer at two in the afternoon I turn into an eighty year old myself and end up going three times an hour for the next eight.

Smile, smile, smile. From the man waiting for us to pass.

"Well you could do with losing some fucking weight, couldn't you!" Was the parting shot from the elderly lady.

The poor man looked as if he was about to burst into tears. Not being one for confrontation, especially with deranged elders who have weapons about their person, I gave him an apologetic smile and suddenly realised that a pelican crossing was looming, which I ran across in order to get away from the crazy offensive pensioner.

Since moving to Hackney, I've not encountered such rudeness. The people who wait for the bus with me are polite. People in my local shops queue and smile and talk and don't comment loudly on your personal appearance or try and maim you if you fail to make sense of their near-silent mutterings.

Entertainingly, I had a run in yesterday that reminded me with a jolt just how rude people can be, which is what reminded me of my west London acquaintance.

I was in the chemist, waiting patiently in the middle of an inevitable queue of grumbling people who were trying to pick up prescriptions and a bottle of Tixylix. After what seemed like an age of shuffling and staring at the gross lipstick colours and wondering if anyone ever buys powdered glucose any more, I got to the counter. I put the pregnancy test on the counter, spent forever and a day trying to locate my purse in my massive handbag, paid up, took the paper bag and turned round to go to the door. The woman behind me, who bore a remarkable resemblance to the lady in Shepherds Bush in the sense that she was small and white haired and was armed with a walking aid, stared me down in a way that made me wonder if one of my boobs was hanging out. Whatever. I made brief eye contact.

"You bloody slut!"

I had no idea what to say. To their credit, the other people in the queue looked appalled and on the verge of taking her out, which would have possibly been more uncomfortable. What do you even say to that? Should I have embarked on a lengthy finger-wagging lecture about how being old doesn't give you the right to make loud and judgements about strangers? Should I have flashed my wedding ring?

In the end I walked out and fell about laughing at the sheer rudeness of some people. At least they can't be called boring.

To add insult to injury, the damn test was duff, which means I get to repeat the experience all over again. This time though, I might go to Boots, where the staff and clientele are in all likelihood more used to hos like me striding in and demanding sticks to piss on.

Happiness is......

....a pub with a cinema screen in it.

Happiness is also the Sunday 1 April lineup of Stand By Me, the Goonies and the Lost Boys. Mmm, 1980s goodness.

I don't know who came up with the idea of the Roxy, but I love them. I've been once before, to see Don't Look Now which is one of my favourite films of all time (having been introduced to it at an early age by my dad, who fancied the pants off Julie Christie and was quite happy to uproot his 8 year old daughter's watching of the Sound of Music in order to emotionally scar her with scenes of rampant shagging and really scary dwarves). I went with K, who HATES this film with a passion, but wanted to see if perhaps watching it while getting quietly spannered would improve matters. We also took S, who had never seen it and would be able to tell us who was right in terms of the film being excellent or rubbish. I fully intended to blog about this at the time actually, but I had to work late, or my glasses broke or something, and I never got around to it.

It's a great place, with a huge back room full of tables and sofas which is where the screen is; with this room separated from the bar area (which also has seats and sofas for those who just want to have a drink and not watch the film. Drinks are normal London prices (about £12 for a bottle of decent red, and £3 a pint) but food is a fantastic bargain. I had a chicken sandwich off the all-day menu and thought I'd never need to eat again - and all for £4.50 too.

Less good is the fact that when we went we were right next to a table of people who were all exceeding pleased with themselves and celebrating this fact with some post-work drinks. I am all up for noisy chatterboxery, but why did they feel the need to hold this evening of fun in the cinema bit when not one of them was even remotely interested in the film? (Apart from the sex scene, whereupon they all went very quiet as if they were being forced to watch it in the same room as their parents. I'm sure I heard one of them hiss "Look! Tits!" to his mate, whose ears then went red.) What annoyed me was that they a) had the comfiest seats in the room, and b) there was an entire other section of the bar in which to sit and talk if you weren't going to watch the film. Being English, of course I wasn't going to go over and ask them to be quiet with a wagging finger, so I just huffed and puffed and gave them cross looks for the best part of an hour before another table away from them became free and we could move. Well, honestly.

So, a good night out guaranteed at the Roxy. Unless of course you are K, who still hated Don't Look Now after another viewing, or S, who had never seen it before and loathed every second of it. No taste, some people.

Book o' blogging

100 bloggers have published a book to raise funds of the BBC's Comic Relief appeal on Friday 16th March.

'Shaggy Blog Stories' features hilarious contributions from Richard Herring of 'Fist of Fun' fame, BBC 6Music presenter Andrew Collins, comedian Emma Kennedy, and James Henry, scriptwriter from Channel Four's 'The Green Wing'.Authors Abby Lee, David Belbin, Zoe McCarthy, Catherine Sanderson and The Guardian's Anna Pickard have also contributed pieces to the book.

The vast majority of contributions, however, are the work of many of the lesser known and unfamiliar heroes of British blogging; going under pen names such as Diamond Geezer, Scaryduck, Pandemian and Unreliable Witness.

The book is the idea of blogger Mike Atkinson who writes the 'Troubled Diva' weblog. 'Shaggy Blog Stories' features comic writing from not only the cream of British blogging, but also the best up-and-coming and undiscovered writers publishing their work on their own websites.

Giving himself a "ridiculously short" seven days from idea to finished product, Atkinson admitted that he was overwhelmed with the response, which gleaned over 300 submissions for publication.

With a pool of talented writers, and the latest publishing-on-demand technology, Shaggy Blog Stories bypasses the usual snail-paced publishing industry, and offers a mail order service to customers who will receive their finished copy within days of placing their order, and only a couple of weeks after the original idea.

"Blogging creates complex, worldwide networks of friendship and contacts on the internet", says journalist Alistair Coleman, one of Shaggy Blog Stories' contributors. "By creating a buzz about this book, we can reach out to hundreds, thousands of readers who'd be willing to part with a few quid for this very good cause. Mike's got some excellent writers on board here whose work deserves a wider audience. Everybody wins."

For details of how to order the book, visit Shaggy Blog Stories. For the background story on the creation of Shaggy Blog Stories, take a look at Troubled-Diva.

Note my festive Red Nose Day themed text, even if it is a day late.

I'd like to thank Mike, Anna and everyone else who worked so hard on this project - it's a great idea and I'm so pleased it's been a resounding success.

Charity rocks!

Comic Relief 2007

I do like people who come up with Good Ideas, and Mike over at Troubled Diva is no exception. He's come up with a great way of raising money for this year's Comic Relief, and needs help from British bloggers!

Basically he's compiling an anthology of humourous blogs posts which will then be sold, and all profits go to Comic Relief. Hurrah!

I've spent the last ten minutes trying to link to the post but whenever I try, Blogger eats the post, so I'll just paste it here, which looks messy, but as least is guaranteed to actually work. Get clicking, y'all!

http://troubled-diva.com/labels/rednoseday.html

All change...

So, I changed my template. The green was giving me a headache, and also when I view the page on any other PC apart from my laptop the font is in a horrible pale green which I don't like; as opposed to the white font which shows up on the laptop screen. Why is this, I wonder?

Anyway, have fun. Tonight was my last day of working late for the next few weeks, so I'll be blogging much more than I have been recently. I'm hoping to do some more of the nostalgic stuff over the next couple of days, which may even feature some photos of me sporting a variety of 80s haircuts. Reason enough for anyone to tune in, surely.

Wireless hits East London

Dear EastEnders,

What? Keith Miller can't afford cornflakes, yet the Miller household seems to have wireless broadband? As does the caff? Since when?

Also: shut up, Dawn Swan; shut up, Rob; shut up, May; shut up, entire Wicks clan; shut up, Chelsea; shut up, Sean; shut up, post-cruise Peggy; shut up, Squiggle; shut up, everyone apart from Tanya.

Love,

Miss Hacksaw

Damn it, I think I blew an artery.

Dork

Oh hell.

The time has finally come. I've avoided this moment for three years now, and due to my extreme slyness so far thought the moment would never come where I would have to go through the hate and humiliation all over again.

No, it's not my smear test, although I'm sure that's overdue as well now I think about it. It's the trip to the opticians to be told how much blinder I am now.

The reason I'm having to go in the first place is because my trusty spectacles have finally given up the ghost. I don't wear them outside the house - partly because I only need them for watching telly, but mainly because they make me look like Norris from Coronation Street - but three years of hardcore TV watching most nights has meant that they've had a fairly intense life, and they rewarded me for all my use by popping apart where the frame and the arm meets. The lens fell out onto the sofa - hilariously I'd had a beer or two when it actually happened and so didn't realise until I wondered aloud to the Hubbo why William Fichtner looked so out of focus and why I had a headache behind one eye. So now my specs are held together at the side by about eight feet of sparkly sellotape. All I need now is a great big plaster over one lens and I'm in full on Declan Swan territory.

The thing I hate about the opticians is the fact that I am never sure if there's a right answer or not. I always get the feeling that if I say that the three is clearer than the nine, or whatever the hell they make you do nowadays, then the bin doctor will shake their head wryly, note something on a pad and leave the room, and the next thing I hear is them and a colleague emitting shrieks of laughter behind the door while I sit there unable to move as my head is pinned to the back of the chair by the lens-tester thing.

I should really go get myself some confidence one of these days.

Anyway, I can't carry on wearing these crazy-ass party-tape specs for much longer, so I've finally made the appointment to go and see them and see what Ugly Betty type frames they will decide looks good for half my monthly paycheck.

There is, of course, another option, especially as I have a feeling I should probably be wearing some sort of vision enhancer at work. Contacts.

I am torn on the contact lens front. The Hubbo wears them every day, and swears that there is no grief involved at all and I am being a whinging arse. However, I'm crap at putting stuff in my eye. I have visions (or no visions, depending on how you look at it) of me spending forty five minutes every morning trying to get the buggers in, being late for work every single day as a result, blundering about with my eyes shut as the contacts are too uncomfortable, eventually losing all patience and trying to get them out in the work loos, only to find that they've wormed their way round the back of my eyeball (ew) and my vision will be distorted forevermore by a flappy bit of plastic fluttering in my skull.

Have any readers got contacts? Am I being un-necessarily alarmed here? If you have any comforting tales then please let me know.

In the meantime, I must go and repair the bins again as I've got some 24 to get on with watching, and the damn sellotape has started unravelling. And there's no way I'm watching an out of focus Kiefer.

Hangover haiku

I had too much beer

Resulting in angry head

Nurofen is great.