on sunday i'm going to wimbledon again. i love love love tennis, especially wimbledon - i don't care who we see, i'm just ecstatic to be there. my dad called me from paris yesterday to tell me that he's booked us a meal in the debenture restaurant: a pimms reception, followed by a three course meal, followed by afternoon tea. the weather is predicted to be much better than last year. my dad is extremely generous and loves his granddaughter very much, so i am optimistic i can convince him to buy her this.

i am getting into that state where i am so excited about it that i daren't think about it because if i do, it'll take over and i won't be able to get on with anything else. i am prone to extreme excitement about big events: my wedding; my solo trips to bath to spend the weekend partying; my birthday. mattgreen thinks that it's insane to get to fever pitch over such things but i really can't help it. that point where everything is organised and it's all just about to start and you can't wait is one of the best feelings in the world.

mattgreen and alicey are lazing on the sofa in their recently re-painted living room.

mattgreen: have you, er, noticed the texture and colour of the ceiling in natural light?
alicey: (choosing her words carefully) well... yeah.. it's a little bit patchy, isn't it?
mattgreen: a little bit? it looks like shit. i'm going to have to do another coat.
alicey: er, yeah, i think that'd be for the best.
(pause)
alicey: have you, um, got anything to say about the texture?
mattgreen: it looks like a bag of jism.

I took Izzy to a birthday party yesterday. It was at a place called Scallywags near us, the sort of generic child's party/activity venue that seem to be making use of abandoned industrial units these days.

The format is pretty simple: you unleash your spawn into a soft play zone with slides, ball ponds and the like whilst the management try their level best to rinse your wallet at every given opportunity. There are little ride-on cars and lollipop machines, nothing obviously sinister or expensive, just enough to apply repeated abuse to your small change if your child senses any weakness. And obviously there's a counter where you can buy sugary drinks, sweeties and other infant Class A drugs.

So after an hour and a half the little bank-depleters were flagging a little and the party food came out. It's the sort of stuff that would make Jamie Oliver jump the counter and take a pool cue to the catering staff in an effort to mete out cuisine justice on the perpetrators. Now at this point Izzy is pretty good: she eats an infinately wider ranger of fruit and vegetables that I did or any of her friends currently do. It's one of the parental proud moments when your daughter lunges at and hogs the cucumber bowl.

Now, whilst she's busy wolfing down food like she's routinely starved (cucumber, cherry tomatoes, 3 small slices of pizza, one (1) chip, a breadcrumb shape containing an unknown meat and a chocolate mini-roll) I get the chance to see how other child-wranglers subjugate their genetic hybrids. My considered opinion is that there is a lot of variation. On the one side there are the well-mannered children who know that not everything green tastes like grass, whilst on the other:

Child A: who was caught spoon-feeding himself ketchup from the bottle.

Child B: who refused to remove a dummy from his mouth unless being spoon-fed cake.

and, in an awesome display:

Child C: who regurgitated an entire semi-digested fish finger onto her plate on top of her other food at high volume whilst other children sang Happy Birthday.


It's a crime that hard liquor isn't sold at these places.

mattgreen and i had a day off work today to decorate our lounge. i insisted on having the tim henman match on while i painted the walls.

currently, the players are taking a quick break between the fourth and fifth sets. it looks like henman is going to win at this stage. his opponent, nieminen, is currently on his honeymoon according to the commentators.

mattgreen: i wouldn't bother coming back if i was him. he's on his honeymoon, might as well call it quits and go to the hotel room.
alicey: (laughing)
mattgreen: not that he's going to get any action anyway, cos his wife's going to think he's got no staying power. if he couldn't capitalise on a two set lead, it shows he's not really committed. it'll be an early night for her!

yesterday, my mum came up to visit and we took isabel to the park. we walked up towards the bowling green and izzy spied people playing bowls.

izzy: i want to go down there!
grandma: no, izzy, you can't go down there, that's a game for old men.
(as we walk past their wives, literally a few feet from the green)
izzy: (pointing) look at all those old men!

we got a few glares.

yesterday afternoon, an extremely fat and sweaty telecommunications salesman came and sat in my stuffy office for an hour. he was wearing a ridiculous amount of very stinky aftershave to mask his b.o. problem. it was pretty bad. after he left, several of my colleagues commented on the smell.

while he was here, he used my telephone. this morning i picked up my phone and i could still smell his aftershave! it was so disgusting i went and got some flash all-surface cleaner from the toilet and scrubbed my phone down with it.

this afternoon, i went to make another phone call and the disgusting stench had returned. i don't know what aftershave he was wearing but it sure had staying power. i asked mattgreen what i could use on my phone that was stronger than flash. he suggested alcohol.

one of my colleagues produced a vat of iso-propyl-alcohol. i drowned my phone in it, and still the faint whiff of aftershave remains.

our telecommunications contract is not being renewed. when will they learn!

Dear Kitchen Floor,

As an unwelcome squatting tenant in our household for the past year and a half I am sure I need not bring to your attention the level of unbridled hatred that you presence incurs on myself and my family. You are responsible for causing severe phychological trauma to myself on account of you abhorrant and wilfully disturbing appearance. Your attempt to masquerade as a quarry tile floor in the past 18 months have been, frankly, pitiful. Although I must admit that covering yourself in water-based red emulsion paint is a master stroke if it is your aim (as I suspect) to drive me to to the ragged brink of my sanity. As you know, all efforts to unmask you for the vinyl villain you are have met with nought but a red mop. I fear now though, your ongoing plan to destroy my already pitifully barren wardrobe one pair of socks at a time must be stopped.

It is, then, with some jubilation that I write to inform you of a recent instance of divine misrepresentation on behalf of my wife which may or may not have involved a ritual sacrifice of an innocent (accounts vary). The result of this improbable jucture is that I have a small amount of money with which I intend to inflict a large amount of pain on your good self. I suggest you and your repulsive assemblage of rotting paint-covered cat biscuits, loose change and sentient fluffballs make your peace with whichever planar demon saw fit to summon you.

I'm finally going to take a chisel to you.


MattGreen.

dear god of spawniness,

well, they say the lord works in mysterious ways. i didn't expect such a speedy response to my letter last night! you are indeed a merciful god.

your loyal servant,

alicey
xxx



it is a fucking cold day in hell that the inland revenue APOLOGISES TO YOU and GIVES YOU A GRAND. better put your coats on, eh? looks like we might get this house decorated this year after all :)

a bit of background:

the inland revenue overpaid our tax credits back in april 2003. i told them, i begged them to take the money back before i spent it, they insisted it was ours. i kept it until may 2004 earning interest, then we spent it on our wedding. in july 2004, they wrote demanding it back. i said no. they said you have to. i appealed against the decision. finally, in january this year, they sent a letter saying my appeal had failed and they would not reconsider without new evidence. i finally decided it was not worth any more hassle and gave up. then the above letter came today. i don't know how or why they have come to that decision now, but my god, it couldn't come a better time. long live the inland revenue! i take it all back!!

dear god of spawniness,

i know we had a little falling out a few weeks ago over my not winning the lottery, but i have forgiven you now. please note that i have just submitted a live 8 text entry. as you are undoubtedly aware, i really deserve to win a couple of tickets so that my husband and i can go and see the killers. i look forward to receiving my winnings shortly.

mwah! mwah!

alicey
xxx

i have taken a day off work to try to catch up with my study. it is going badly. physics is a bastard. it's taken me about 4 hours to do a 90 minute activity about beta plus and beta minus radioactive decay. did you know there's something called the valley of the nuclides? trust me, you don't want to know. even mattgreen, who has always been the font of all scientific knowledge in this household, no longer knows what i'm talking about. now that's depressing.

i have learned a couple of things though.

1. i really, really hate einstein, marie curie, and a bunch of other nosey fuckers like mendeleev. if i'd been doing science a couple of centuries ago, it would've been dead easy. i am growing to despise the swotty bastards who came up with all these so-called "great ideas" that just make everything more difficult. they put in little biographies of all these people in the text to make it 'interesting' and mine have all sprouted moustaches and little devil horns. (actually, mendeleev didn't need much help, he already looks like a freak).

2. why, oh why, did they have to call a computer game "half life". do you know how hard it is to find any USEFUL information about half lives on the internet now? bastards.

i'm talking to mattgreen about big brother. i'm explaining that i could never go on that programme because my tattoo would give me away.

alicey: somebody would ask me why i got it and once i told them, every ex-boyfriend i'd ever had would come crawling out to the papers.
mattgreen: you'd have to make up some other reason.
alicey: i couldn't do that!
mattgreen: of course you could. all you'd have to do is stand up and start shouting, (mattgreen shakes his fist in the air) l5r! l5r! l5r!!

alicey: hey mattgreen, i've been reading this website and it's got this thing about setting goals. what you do is you just choose one goal you want to complete today, one for next month and one for next year, and you write them in a book. and you just keep doing it every day! i think i might do it, i could have goals like, "i won't have a cigarette today" or "i'll run for 40 minutes today".
mattgreen: or, "i won't go to the bakery today".
(this is a running joke: the bakery is the downfall of my diet, and virtually daily i wrangle with myself over whether to go and buy a chocolate nest or not. yesterday mattgreen went to the bakery and i said, 'don't buy a nest!' so he bought a giant cookie instead and i ate half of it. my diet is not going well)
alicey: no... how about, "i won't go to the bakery and buy a nest today"?
mattgreen: (laughing) and tomorrow you can have, "i won't go to the bakery and buy a cookie the size of a bin lid"!

last night i fell asleep in the car on the way home from work. as soon as i got in the house i went straight to bed. i finally got up at 8pm, couldn't be bothered to make dinner and fed mattgreen salad and pitta bread and chutney. then i went back to bed at 11pm, and didn't wake up until 8am this morning.

at some point during all this sleeping, i had the following weird dream:

i was in a garden centre and when i came out to my car, they had locked all the gates to the car park. mattgreen was on the other side of the gates, shouting that there was an open gate further along. i drove across the car park to the open gate and discovered it was at the top of a steep flight of stairs. there was a garden centre employee there who said, "it's all right, you can drive down these steps, just listen to my instructions". he started saying things like, "use a low gear and go down the first two steps, then turn the wheel to the right..." and i just decided, "nevermind that, let's go for it!"

so i slammed my foot down on the accelerator and the car lurched down the steps, and i lost control a bit and swerved from one side to the other. i could feel the underside of the car scraping down the steps and eventually the car ground to a halt. i tried to pull on the handbrake but the lever was all twisted and nothing happened. mattgreen came running up and i said, "oh no, the car's totally fucked, this is going to be expensive," and mattgreen said, "at least we still have the tax disc," and then i woke up.

what does it meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeean?