'World-weary

I'll be so glad when the Burnt Flesh Fest party is over to be honest. Next year might be different with everything in place but the hard slog to prepare the house and garden along with the stress of the plumber and added work pressures I would be just happy to have a week in bed.

The weekend before last I made the impulse hire of a vibrator, ground compactor that is to flatten the mudded area into a patio and path. Without any warming up I did my back in again (Christ, I'm sounding like a moaning old git) just lifting it into the car. If it hadn't been for James and Emma, the weekend would have been written off and more. Thanks to them we created the foundations and lifted the hulk of 58kgs of pure awkwardness in through the house. The patio and path took another two sessions to finish it off. We laid the patio stones and slabs straight after work mid-week and finished under torch-light running out of materials. The second session was Saturday with the path created with decorative bark.

Underworld at Brighton Centre
Friday night was seeing Underworld with Trev and Pom. It was my first time at the Brighton Centre, actually I lie, my second. The first time was when I was about 7 years old at a Lego exhibition where they built the tallest brick tower and my dad got caught doing over a 100mph on the M25 in his Ferrari.

We'd missed Phil Hartnoll's DJ set and came in to some unknown DJ who did well to inspire the crowd to dance. For the first time in ages, the headliner came on stage ion time at 9:30pm. Underworld played an okay set mixing up the full-on crowd-pleasers then filling the gaps with some very old DubNoBassInMyHeadMan tunes plus a couple of obscure tracks from the new album, Oblivion with Bells. It sort of worked as a set but you got the impression they wanted to be more experimental. It was quite refreshing to have some space to dance though it still didn't better their set at Wireless which is still strong in our minds. After seeing the same Astroids, paddle tennis, Dalmation dog and inflatable column visuals and hearing Born Slippy, we skipped the last bit to get our coats. At exactly 11:oopm they were finished, no encore and little bit of booing, job done.

No plumber's mate

My current workload both professional and personal has meant very little blogging. The entry below has also caused time away from anything fun.

A few weeks ago the plumber, who caused one of the most stressful moments of my life tried to bill me with work for three times as much as quoted. I was slightly surprised he had the nerve to be honest. This over-the-top bill and the fact he could have killed my tenants, according to Transco was naturally refused with a deftly written letter. The reply came back with an irate response. With the prospect of getting a solicitor involved I was actually glad to hear the opinion from the other, saintly plumber who came in to save the situation. Apparently, he's got such a bad reputation that the majority of Norfolk tradesman and Transco are driven round the U-bend and wish his stop-cock cut off.

Since then I've done a few things. Reported the plumber to the Trading Standards, though they haven't done much, contacted CORGI, who pointed me to their website and not interested in the invoice dispute, only the procedure stuff, and I wrote to the tenants to ask for their permission to request this Transco report. On the phone they were ok with it but after they received the letter they flatly refused to get involved my personal dispute and even said they going to shred the letter. To say I was calm about this was a major understatement having based all my actions on their demands. I've called them so many times to try and talk to them about it but they've ignored me with no response to the messages left. It means I can't get any evidence to say this plumber f*cked up. It also makes me wonder how honest people were at that time of stress.

Wanting to just rid me of this stress, I emailed the plumber to re-offer his invoice minus what cost me to fix his problems, around £200 less. But no, the plumber's having none of it and has since rejected the offer. I'm now having to go to the Citizen's Advice Bureau to get some proper direction and have written another letter to the tenants with all the words like 'negligence' disconnected from 'tenants'. Hopefully they'll see more sense.

I was also going to install a new boiler into the rented house but with all this extra, potential cost I've had to delay it until next month for my next salary. Until the tenants start talking to me again we'll never know when we can arrange the installation.

Watch this space for more legal crap!

Monkey Waiter

Spy Vs. Spy

Friday evenings and the M25 can only mean one thing and that's exactly what happened. After a depressing average speed of 5mph for about 20 miles we got to Kerry's brother's place near Bicester about 8:45pm. Lucky the pizzas were ordered in time so we were blown away by Neil's enormous new HD-TV and Netgear media centre. Whether it was the hardwork of the week or the quadruple shots of vodka, I was wiped out by 11:30pm and stumbled into bed.

Although the weekend was about seeing Neil and Nikki before their Australian new life, I'd organised a Spy Games experience (through Lastminute.com) for Kerry which was an hour's drive near Hemel Hempstead. I'd booked this back in August before I knew Kerry was organising her work's Xmas bash to the same experience so I knew she'd be up for it. After cocking up the directions we arrived at the Scout's camp and was slightly shocked at how many people were taking part. Instead of the estimated handful of people there were around 50-60 wanna-be spies. I was hoping to get a few photos but there were no lockers for bags and valuables.

We were split into three teams with our first experience of gun-drawing and a laser gun battle. The first part involved strapping on a holster and drawing a banana-yellow gun making us look like a bunch of dicks. The second part was fun at first but for some us it ended in shambles as we got kitted up with a laser-gun and battled against others in the woods. There was no way of knowing who's side people were on plus a few of the guns shot themselves depleting you own live. Grrr!

The second experience was the weapons training which started automatic weapons. We were greeted by possibly the biggest bloke I've ever seen who'd double as Bond villain's thick bodyguard. The machine guns were slightly pathetic firing tiny white pellets and were used in an army exercise to stagger forward in pairs shooting targets shouting at each other. The guns kept jamming and the exercise was slightly confusing.

Next we tried sniper rifle shooting but for me the sights were all screwed up. We all had 12 shots of metal pellets to hit a target and tin can. The staff got their timings wrong and had to rush us through the exercise.

The final weapon was the axe throwing, and although so brief, was probably the most fun. Again, the experience was rushed along with only 3 throws at a target. I was one of two people to get 'wood'.

The third and final section of the day started with quite an interesting presentation on surveillance equipment like cameras, microphones and the scary and real equipment of mobilephones which could record every conversation, text etc. Employers have been known to use this technique and get away with it. The other half was unarmed combat techniques outside which gave us some valuable self-defence techniques including some nasty finger grabs near the neck and shoulders.

At the end of the day the self-defence session nearly redeemed the whole experience but would not really recommend it. Kerry took it as a practice for her staff Xmas and could chop out the worst bits like the machine gun part. Ok, so firing real machine guns would completely dangerous but according to someone we spoke to on the day you could trial real guns in the US.

Why Mum's money's gone to Iceland

I don't think I've ever been affected by any national or international news directly but after getting home last night from work every news programme and station was watched in disbelief. This BBC news story will tell you all my and Kerry's worries as the Credit Crunch finally gets us. Under the advice of the Money Saving Expert, I deposited £40k of my mum's inheritance into the Icesave account. Kerry had been saving monthly with them and had been left this morning hanging on the bank's helpline.

Checking today's news has at least eased some of the stress away but experts say it will be months until I see that money and without any interest. Fu*kers!

Sushi Heaven

After the stress of the shed it was good to be rewarded with a decent night out thanks to Kerry's success at work. She'd been awarded £100 to spend on a meal out and that's nearly what we spent. Oki-nami in Brighton is relatively new Japanese restaurant but had previously been in Hove. Its also part owned by Mr. Cook of Fatboy fame.

Started off with some Shochu cocktails, of which I'd say Kerry's plum flavoured one beat my passion fruit and melon one, and to eat some Maki and Nigiri sushi filled with shiitake mushrooms, sesame seeds and king prawn. Quite adventurous for me but I avoided the prawn. A nice touch in case the conversation runs dry was that the chopsticks were wrapped in origami paper with folding instructions. I made a jumping frog.

Second course was some Japanese tapas or otsumame taking in some Nikku gyoza (dumplings filled with pork & vegetable), Hotate yaki (Pan-fried fresh scallops in garlic butter) and Yasai ten. (vegetable tempura) which were all fantastic. By then the shochu cocktails were downed so went on to Kirin beer which is on tap.

Third course was slightly piggy with Kerry ordering Tuna wafu which is raw but cooked tuna fillet in a savoury citrus sesame sauce. The manager talked her into it saying it was completely different to normal tuna and he was so right. Even I liked it and I hate tuna. My mains course was ostrich teriyaki-style which was amazing. Never had ostrich which really tastes and looks like beef.

Final course, though amazed we had any room for it, we shared a Japanese Millionaire's cake or Okumanchyojya. Another amazing taste and a bill just shy of a ton!

We met up with an karate mate, Lawrence who was in town with his missus, Jenny checking out Om and the Three and Ten bar.

Shed Hell

I did my husband duty of watching the Sex and the City film on Friday night. I can handle the normal 30 minutes format of the TV programme which can be quite funny but 148 minutes of fluffed up nothingness made me reach for the laptop. Even Kerry commented that it made women look like brand junkies with too many product placements.

Our Burnt Flesh Festival party preparations are going well overspending on the Halloween decoration. The house will get a proper haunted make-over ready for the big night. Even Sasha, our cat has got into the spirit of the party with his own costume (I can't believe how well he posed for the camera).

The home improvement plan also took its toll over the weekend as we had two major jobs to do: 1) erect the new shed and 2) remove the plaster from the fireplace. The weather was a complete contrast to last week starting with patchy rain but with the shed parts taking up most of the dining room we took the risk. We painted two sides with a wood stain then put them up. That's when it started to drizzle. Ignoring it we put up the other two walls and the drizzle got harder. The instructions to build the shed were just five sentences and only two useful photos - Ikea it wasn't.

On the third wall we knocked over a nearly full can of wood stain at £26 a go and stress levels rose. As we attached the roof the wind picked up and the drizzle turned into its uglier, wetter relative. Since the path had been dug up the mud appeared and our shoes started to platform up. Finally I had to buy a tarpaulin to cover it up and give up for the day especially after the stress it caused which I can only compare to what old sailors had to endure. Baton down the hatches!