Silly fool works for a very well known computer hardware type majiggy company, doing some kind of facilities management thing. Yes, I don't understand my husband's job. Yes, this has been the case for far too long now for me to be able to ask. Yes, I'm telling you things that you really don't need to know.

Anyway.

He did the fire alarm test this morning...but forgot to tell the fire alarm company, meaning that they did headless chicken style panic and dispatched a fire engine directly to the building.

My husband is now very popular with all of the female staff.

Silly arse.

He's still yet to surpass the incident from when I worked at the hotel, when the fatal combination of a panicked greek man and my dodgy hearing resulted in pretty much all of the emergency services in the west midlands being sent to us for NO REASON AT ALL.

Allow me to explain.

Yannis, the assistant manager, was like the Greek Fonz. He was cool. He wore leather jackets and said "heyyyy...." But he also had a habit of getting a little too easily stressed when he was left in charge, and would often be found polishing glasses with a thunderous expression while muttered Greek obscenities drifted out across the restaurant. I was sat in reception, calmly minding my own business and reading a Harry Potter book (reception work is great), when Yannis suddenly burst in, red in the face and speaking far too quickly, his accent enhanced by his panic:
Y: "Fiye! FIYE!! Coll the police!!"
Me:"Fire? Is there a fire?"
Y: "Eeeeh!!!" (runs back out in direction of restaurant)
Me: (dials 999) "Yes, the Thingy Hotel, it seems there's a fire...no, I don't know how bad it is...sorry, no, I don't know where in the building it is either...thank you." (Hangs up and walks quickly out to restaurant, catching Yannis as he tries to run past) "Yannis. YANNIS! Where is the fire?"
Y: "No! No Fiye! Fiyet!!!"
Me: "Fight?"
Y: "Eeeeh!! Coll the police!!"
Me: (back to reception and back on the phone)"...yes, there isn't a fire, we don't need the fire brigade. It's a fight, we need the police. No, I don't know how many people are involved. Thank you." (hangs up)
Y: (Bursts back into reception) "Eeeh! Someone hurt! Coll an ambulance!" (dashes back out to restaurant)
Me: "Yes, Thingy Hotel...there's been a fight, someone's been hurt - we need an ambulance. No, I don't know how many people have been hurt. No, I don't know how serious, sorry. Thank you."

Fifteen minutes later one of the kitchen staff ran into reception with the sort of smile that can only mean you've cocked up. "There's three fire engines outside, at least five police cars and two ambulances. What did you do??"

You can only imagine how red my face was. Especially when I walked out into the restaurant just in time to see that the general managers had returned and were herding policemen out of the function room. I tried to go outside the kitchen door to calm down, but was confronted with the sight of two fire engines filled with bemused looking firemen, so ended up hiding in the dry stores room until everyone had disappeared.

All that was missing was an SAS team swinging in on ropes through the windows.

The best bit? It was classic Yannis over-reaction, the fight was between two men who ended up taking it outside and dealing with it themselves. Someone got punched in the face and that was the end of it.

We were lucky not to get fined. ("Fined!! FINED!! Eeeh!!")

OUCH, GOD DAMMIT!!

She's doing something painful. I think she's got her foot on a nerve, which means that I can't breathe in properly. It's all cute until someone feels like they're having a heart attack.

BOREDOM AND ITCHINESS.

Oh God I've been bored today. I've been at that level of boredom whereby life seems so pathetically dull that there's no point in even trying to do anything. I went back to bed at 11.30 this morning in the hope that I'd be able to kill some time...unfortunately Carrott decided that he wanted to serenade me and then get under the covers (if only all men were so considerate), so my nap was kind of ruined. Especially when he got bored of being sleepy and went to bite Flea. And then climbed on top of the wardrobe to practise his singing and execute olympic standard belly-flops onto the bed.

Do you find, though, that boredom causes facial itches? I'm so glad I didn't put any make-up on yet today - I'd look like bloody Alice Cooper with the amount of facial rubbing that's gone on.

Oh no...I'm inflicting dullness upon you. I'm so sorry.

THINGS YOU SHOULDN'T SAY AT WORK

I was on the phone to Alex earlier and at one point in the conversation he had reason to say "Yes, I'll just get my 14 inch anal insertion device*...", which is always a bad idea when you're stood outside the front entrance of your office.

* Don't ask. Do you want to know? Really? You sick bugger. Ok then, I'll tell you.

I googled 'speculum' just to check the spelling (again, don't ask), and happened across a 'medical sex toys' site. Well, of course I had to have a look. Don't judge me, you'd have probably looked too. But anyway. One of the first things I saw was a picture of a penis with a METAL INSTRUMENT BEING FED INTO IT. The next picture I saw looked like the sort of thing you'd use to do the edges of pastry on a pie, but more spiky. And it was being used to perforate a penis. And then I saw the 'needle hammer'...which is a small hammer with a needle in it. Weird.

I decided it was necessary to share, so sent the pictures for Alex's perusal, eliciting the (reassuring) response of "Gah! Why? Why do people do that? Why? My bits are now hiding somewhere around my armpit." I'm so glad he finds it weird. One of the pictures I didn't send was of a man with a fourteen inch long piece of metal inserted up his bum. When I told Alex about this he speculated that it would be useful in a medical environment for increasing the heartrate - hence the weird conversation. I've threatened to send Alex to work later with my love eggs shoved up his bum so he can practise clenching all night, but he's not keen. Boring sod.

But back to the medical sex toys thing - I'm pretty open minded, but Google has seriously opened my eyes. I never knew there was so much deviant porn out there. I never knew that people used catheters as part of BDSM. I'd never heard of a fucking machine. (Understand that I usually come across these things in the midst of messed up msn conversations with Lou or my sister - I don't just stick as many suggestive words into google as possible and see what happens).

ODD CONVERSATION EXTRACT

I remember part of a conversation I had with Alex when I was falling asleep last night. I've been trying all day to remember the rest of it in order to make sense of this total bollocks, but to no avail. So I'm going to stick the extract on here - see what you can make of it.

Me: "It's a chicken"
Alex: "No, not a chicken"
Me: "Yes, chicken. Spanish chicken."
Alex: "Where from?"
Me: "...Spanish Chicken website."
Alex: "There is no Spanish Chicken website."
Me: "Don't you get all 'Matrix' on me."

What the...? You see why I'm confused? I just can't figure out what we were talking about.

You know what? This is all getting a bit ridiculous now - stream of consciousness rambling is all well and good unless you're planning on posting the aforementioned rambling on the internet.

THIRTY WEEKS? HOW DID THAT HAPPEN??

"...HOW SAD IT WAS TO BE AN ANIMAL WHO HAD NEVER HAD A BUNCH OF VIOLETS PICKED FOR HIM..." (piglet)


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