[Clearwater Beach, Gulf of Mexico, Florida]
This is where I’ll be this time next month.
This is also why I’ve been a bit quiet recently: as regular readers know, the approach of a holiday sees me pretty much chained to my desk, frantically queuing up blog posts for The Fashion Police and Shoeperwoman so I don’t go out of business while I’m lying on that there beach. My muscles ache from the tension, I’ve developed RSI in my right hand thanks to all of the typing/scrolling I’ve been doing (I have a wrist brace from the last time this happened, and I’m trying to take as many breaks as I can, but other than that, my only hope is that Rubin suddenly develops a passion for women’s shoes. And learns how to write, obviously, so he can take over blogging duties.*) and yesterday I woke up with a migraine. But it will all be worth it. Yes it will. Because… the sun. And the beach. And the Neiman Marcus shoe department. And that feeling of being “home” I always get when I step off the plane and get that first whiff of the Florida air. (And never get when I actually am “home”, funnily enough…). Oh yes, it will be worth it.
As luck would have it, the week before we leave is the week of the Diamond Jubilee, which means I don’t have to write content for the public holidays on the Monday and Tuesday of that week. On the Wednesday, our friends are getting married, so I have the day off for that and, well, the day after to recover. Friday will be spent packing, cleaning the house and all of that other fun stuff you have to do before a trip, so basically I have just under three weeks to work, then I’m off for a month. And I could not be more excited about it.
It also makes for a good excuse to shop.
*Rubin can totally write, by the way. You all know this.
(Zara pants, La Redoute sweater, Marc by Marc Jacobs handbag and Gucci sunglasses (c/o Shopbop)
A couple of years ago, I discovered a vintage Jean Varon dress in a thrift store in Edinburgh.
Now, I’m no fashion historian, but this dress looked to me like it was from the early-to-mid 70s: it was in pristine condition – in fact, it looked like it had never been worn – and it was £4.50. So even although I knew I would never, ever wear it, I bought it, thinking I’d stick it on eBay, and maybe make a bit of a profit from it.
The thing was, though, that once I got the dress home, I found myself strangely reluctant to part with it. For one thing, it fit like it was made for me. And for another, well, it was just really, really beautiful, in its own, 70s-tastic kind of way. And that was the problem. You see, while the dress was beautifully made, in a gorgeous green and white floral print fabric (green! my favourite dress colour!), it was very definitely of its time. It was ruffled. And… flouncy. And, look, let’s make no bones about this: it was a 70s shepherdess dress. In fact, when I took it round to show my mum, the second I stepped into the living room with it on, my dad instantly asked me if I’d had any luck finding my sheep yet.
It was that kind of dress. And even although my tagline is “never knowingly under-dressed”, I knew beyond doubt that there was just absolutely no possibility of me having an opportunity to wear it (or not outside of a fancy dress party, anyway, which would seem like a waste of such a dress). It wasn’t suitable for a wedding, or a party. You couldn’t really wear it out to dinner, or to visit friends. Well, not unless any of those events were actually happening in 1972, and there were going to be sheep present, that is. And honestly, how often are YOU invited to a sheep-herding party in 1972? Hardly ever, I’ll bet.
So there was really no possibility of me ever wearing the dress. I knew this, and because I really hate the idea of buying things and then not using them, I also knew I should follow through with my original plan, sell the dress on eBay, and then forget all about it.
But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.
After just a few days of owing the dress, you see, my unnatural attachment to inanimate objects had well and truly kicked in. I felt attached to the dress. And more than that, I was absolutely fascinated by it. What was its story, I wondered? The small amount of research I’d done into the label told me that my initial guess had been correct, and that the dress dated from sometime in the 70s. And yet, it had never been worn. What had happened, I wondered, that some girl (and in my head, this girl wasn’t just the same approximate shape and height as me: she looked just like me, too. Fancy that.) had bought this lovely dress… and then had just hung it up somewhere and forgotten about it for all these years? How had a dress from the 70s come to find itself in an Edinburgh thrift store in 2010, just hanging there, waiting for me to discover it?
The more I thought about this, the more convinced I became that the dress had been waiting for me. It wanted me to find it. And so I would pick it up and put it on, and I would twirl around in it and think about its story.
“Still looking for those sheep?” Terry would ask.
Eventually, I gave in. It had been weeks, and I was no closer to working out what it was the dress wanted from me, or how I could help it fulfil its destiny. And honestly, I needed the money for something which I totally can’t even remember now, so it can’t even have been that important, but whatever it was, I allowed it to convince me that I was NOT the proper guardian of the Jean Varon dress, and that I should stick to The Plan and sell it.
So I did.
I got quite a bit for it, as I recall, and even although I had a pang of sadness as I packaged it up and sent it on its way, I told myself I’d done the right thing. I mean, as I said, I just don’t believe in buying or owning things just for the sake of it. I know that probably sounds strange coming from a fashion blogger, but although I have a lot of shoes and dresses (and trousers, and tops, and … you get the idea), I’m not much of a hoarder. I believe in getting my money’s worth out of the things I buy. I think clothes should be worn, not just left to gather dust, and if I have any clothes that fall into that category, I always end up donating or selling them, otherwise I feel guilty about them. The Jean Varon dress had no place in my closet. It couldn’t possibly earn its keep. So I told myself I had sent it on to the person who would love it, and wear it, and allow it to fulfil its destiny.
I was wrong, though.
You see, the woman who bought the dress didn’t like it. “Don’t get me wrong,” she wrote to me, when she asked for her money back, “it’s a beautiful dress. But it looks terrible on me. You should give it to the redhaired girl who was wearing it in the auction photos: it looks like it was made for her.”
I almost let her send it back. I was almost swayed by the “looks like it was made for her” part into believing I’d made a mistake: that I WAS the true owner of the dress, after all. But the fact was, I still needed the money. And I still wouldn’t have worn the dress. So I held firm, she kept the dress, and I don’t know what happened to it after that. Oh, the humanity.
Why am I telling you all of this? Dammed if I know. No, wait, I do. See, for the last year (or two), I’ve been wondering what the hell I’m actually doing with this blog. The longer I have it, and the less I have to write about in it, the more convinced I become that I’m Doing It Rong, and that a personal blog can never really work without some kind of a “hook”, or theme. And this week I thought my theme could be that I could tell you the story of my clothes. They all have them, you know. They might not be as mysterious as the doomed Jean Varon dress, but for almost every item in my closet, I could tell you a tale or two, either about how I came to own it, how I came to lose it (because no one loses clothes as often as I do. NO ONE.) or what I did when I wore it.
So I decided that’s what I’d do. I would tell the story of my clothes – as well as other things I write about, obviously – and that would be the thing that would keep this site limping forward now that Nigel, the International Man of Mystery Next Door is gone.
Then I wore this outfit, and I realised that these clothes?
These clothes have no story. Like, none, whatsoever.
Another idea bites the dust.
And I will always wonder what became of the Jean Varon dress.*
(Yes, I know this post would’ve been a lot more interesting if I’d shown you the photos of it. But I spent ages searching my hard drive drive, and I can’t find them, so I think I must have deleted them. Whoops.)
I have to admit, all these years I’ve been writing about Nigel, the International Man of Mystery Next Door, there’s been a little part of me which secretly hoped the mystery would never be solved, and that we would just go on like this forever, with me endlessly speculating about the bodies under the patio, and thanking the powers that be that we’d managed to essentially buy ourselves a quiet, detached house, with no pesky neighbours, for the price of a two-bedroomed semi. And then, when I was an old woman, I would STILL be talking about Nigel. He’d have become a creature of myth and legend by then, and his tale – or what little was known of it – which would be essentially NOTHING, really – would be passed down through the generations, until one day, a flame-haired distant ancestor of mine, would find some small spark of interest in the story, and would use this very blog to uncover clues that I even I wasn’t aware of at the time, to finally solve the mystery, and discover the deadly secret Nigel had been hiding. The secret he thought he’d taken to his grave. The secret that I still haven’t actually decided what it would be yet, so please just imagine something truly shocking and groundbreaking. Then please tell me what it is, so that I can put it my novel.*
(*I am not actually writing a novel. Because I can never work out the endings to any of the stories I make up. And because, ooh, lookit those shooz!)
In this way, I liked to imagine that in the year 3112 (say), my true genius would finally be recognised (Bloggers are never appreciated in their own time, are they? Except all the ones that are, obviously.), and I would become famous. I would get my own postage stamp, perhaps, and a documentary on the History Channel. (Oh, shut up. I know postage stamps won’t exist in 3112. And the History Channel goes bust in 3010, when they invent TV that’s beamed straight into your brain. But humour me.) And I’d be the answer to a question on a TV quiz show, too. (“Which 21st century blogger was the lamest of them all?”) It would rock. And, you know, even if none of that happened, it’s not like I have anything else to write about here, is it? I needed Nigel to keep on being an International Man of Mystery: not just for the sake of my current sanity (Did I ever mention how thin the walls are between our houses? Or how much I detest noise?) and my future notoriety, but for the sake of the BLOG, kids. Will no one think of the BLOG, here?
But it’s no use. I can’t keep the truth from you. And so today I bring the news that the mystery has finally been SOLVED.
And I’ll tell you how after this from our sponsors!
OK, I’m joking. The truth, as it almost always is, is just such an anti-climax that I thought I’d try to make it a bit more dramatic. I can’t, though, so let the record show that the mystery was finally solved on the afternoon of Saturday May 5th, in the year of our Lord, 2012, by that daring sleuth known as “Terry”.
You see, as he pulled into the driveway on Saturday afternoon, Terry glanced at the house next door, and who should he see standing in the doorway, giving it a quick lick of paint (a BAD SIGN), but Nigel, the International Man of Mystery. And Terry, not being a complete wuss, like I am, decided to take matters into his own hands and solve the mystery right then and there. So he did what I should’ve done last week: he strode over to the M.O.M and said, “Hi Nigel! Sorry to bother you, but we couldn’t help but notice that you’re an International Man of Mystery. Next door. So, what’s up with that?”
Or words to that effect.
And the thing is, people: absolutely NOTHING is up with that. Seriously, nothing at all. It turns out that the M.O.M has just been working abroad for the past few years. He couldn’t be bothered with the hassle of renting the house, and the housing market wasn’t really conducive to selling it, so he just left it.
Until now.
Now he’s selling.
Yes, it seems that my worst fears are to come to pass, and rather than simply digging up the bodies, the recent frenzied activity next door has been part of N’s preparation to sell the house to a family of 12 pot-smoking rock drummers. I, er, guess the fact that “digging up bodies” was the BEST case scenario here tells you all you need to know about how well THAT bit news went down with me, huh?
For the first time in six years, we’re going to have neighbours. And honestly, I know that with a bit of understanding we could become the perfect friends (boom boom!) but folks: those walls are THIN. Like, REALLY thin. Like, “you can hear someone clear their throat through them” thin. Like, “We may as well sell the TV then, because we’ll be able to just listen to theirs,” thin. Like, “OMG, I give it two minutes before they’re round here complaining about Rubin barking and me clomping around in my heels all day,” thin.
So the walls are THIN, (Did you get that the walls are thin? Did you?) but not nearly as thin as my patience for other people’s noise is. And I’ve never had a neighbour who wasn’t noisy. This means that ever since Terry brought me the bad news on Saturday, I’ve been alternating between looking at new houses on the Internet, and just walking around going, “What if they have a drum kit? Or are Justin Bieber fans? WHAT IF?”
Terry thinks it’ll all be fine. My mum thinks it’ll be a good thing, because Rubin will learn to hear tiny noises without going off like a rocket, and I will have to learn how to be a better, more tolerant person, like the rest of you are.
But I have my doubts.
I also have a vague plan to make sure Rubin is always in the garden when people come to view the house. I’m guessing that “small, yappy dog next door” probably isn’t on most people’s property checklist…
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(H&M trousers, Rocket Dog shoes, Dorothy Perkins sweater, Gucci sunglasses c/o Shopbop)
When I was a kid, all of my friends wanted to be things like dentists and train drivers and stuff. (Note: none of my friends wanted to be dentists or train drivers. I just said that in case one of them reads this, recognises themselves, and then goes off at me for mocking their childhood dream of being a lollipop lady. Whoops.) (There is nothing wrong with being a dentist, train driver, or lollipop lady, by the way. You go on with your bad selves, lollipop ladies of the world.) (I really hate the way I always have to qualify everything I say in case I offend someone who doesn’t realise that it’s supposed to be a joke.) (I’ve written so many parentheses now that I honestly can’t remember what I was talking about. How are you all? What’s your weather like? Can anyone remember why I’m here?)
OK, I’m just going to start this again…
When I was a kid, all of my friends wanted to be things like dentists and train drivers and stuff. Not me, though. I wanted to be a pop star/actress who was also in the British showjumping team, and who solved mysteries in her spare time, like Nancy Drew. And who ran a riding school, which also had kennels, and I kept all of the abandoned animals of the world in them. And the stables were next to a big, glass house, which I lived in and wrote all my Booker prize winning novels from. It was going to be freaking ACE, seriously.
Now, the fact that I couldn’t sing or act for toffee, and was also pretty rubbish at showjumping, to be completely honest, didn’t even enter my mind here, although I DID spend a disproportionate amount of time worrying about how I would juggle the demands of an international showjumping career with the worldwide stadium tours I would be undertaking. And who would run the riding school when I was on location, shooting my next big movie? It was a worry, and I mean it was an ACTUAL worry. I would lie awake at night fretting over the fact that there were no existing showjumping detectives with amazing vocal talents, and that I would have to blaze the trail in this respect. “It’s not fair,” I thought, moodily. “I have to do EVERYTHING by myself.”
Then, of course, was the fear that I hadn’t started early enough with my plans. I’d started riding lessons when I was relatively young, sure, but I was still no closer to actually owning a pony, and I couldn’t carry a note in a bucket. One thing I COULD make a start on, though, was the detective work. I knew that all of the great detectives of our time – Nancy Drew, the Famous Five, Frederick “Fatty” Trotteville of the Five Find-Outers and Dog – had all solved their first mysteries by the time they were in their early teens. I, at ten, was quickly running out of time, so I decided not to bother waiting until I grew up (which was wise, in retrospect, given that I’m STILL waiting for that to happen…) and just become a famous detective right now.
To this end, I acquired a notepad and pen, roped in some unfortunate friends to be my sidekicks, asked my parents if I could use the garden shed as my base (they said no. So, really, it’s their fault that I’m not sitting here with medals hanging off my chest for my services to detective work, seriously), and went out in search of a mystery to solve.
I searched long and hard for this mystery. I would patrol the neighbourhood with my friends, collecting “clues” – to what, I had no idea. The “clues” were things like old cigarette ends, discarded Coke cans and, on one memorable occasion, A FRAGMENT OF AN OLD SHOE. Which proved it, basically. I don’t what what it proved exactly, but I told myself that this motley collection of “clues” (which were by no means just bits of rubbish, so don’t even think it) offered concrete evidence that something was going on.
Sadly for me, I never did work out What Was Going On. Actually, the biggest mystery of my childhood was the one I like to think of as The Mystery of Why There Were No Mysteries. Because really, there weren’t. My life was as un-mysterious as it’s possible for a life to be, which was a source of endless disappointment to me. Nancy Drew couldn’t leave her house (in her snazzy little convertible) without falling over a mystery. The Secret Seven could solve FIVE mysteries, and still be home in time for tea. The Famous Five had more mysteries than they had hot dinners – and the Five had a LOT of hot dinners, let me tell you. But me? Nothing. Not a single light shining from the window of a supposedly-abandoned house. Not a rich young child kidnapped, with a ransom note which only I would be able to decipher. Not even a smuggler, people, seriously. I mean, what do you have to do to find a freaking smuggler in this town, I ask you?
I tell you all of this because at the weekend, it suddenly occurred to me that my younger self would have been absolutely thrilled to know that one day she would live next door to an International Man of Mystery. She would’ve had that case solved: probably by tea-time. And when that International Man of Mystery Next Door suddenly re-appeared after a six-year absence, and started digging up his patio, my younger self would, under no circumstances, have simply stood open-mouthed at the window, shouting, “Terry! Terry! HE’S ACTUALLY DIGGING UP THE BODIES! MY BLOG READERS WERE RIGHT! OMG!”
(I mean, seriously: the mysterious neighbour who you secretly suspect of being a mass murderer turns up one day and starts digging in his garden: you’re going to at least try to find out why, aren’t you?)
But that’s what happened, people. Yes, on Sunday afternoon, Nigel TIMOMND, graced us with his second visit in a month. He came with an accomplice. They were here for several hours, digging. And OK, they weren’t actually digging up the patio. They were just…digging the patio. Presumably to clear some of the weeds that have gathered there in the past, you know, SIX YEARS. Something is obviously UP. Either he’s moving back, or he’s selling up, or he’s renting it out, or he’s digging up bodies… Any one of these outcomes will be deeply traumatic for me because a) I’m a total freak, seriously and b) I’m a freak who can’t tolerate noise of any kind, and who is used to having no neighbour now. And the thing is, I COULD have tried to find out what he was doing. I could’ve opened the back door, walked out, and been all, “Hey, diddly ho, neighbour! Long time, no see! How’re them bodies cookin’?”
But I didn’t.
Nope, I just stood peering out through the blinds, wondering how much we could sell the house for if someone DOES move in next door, and whether it would be enough to buy that penthouse in Edinburgh I sometimes look at on the Internet when I’m bored.
(Answer: no, it wouldn’t. Also: hahahahaha, AS IF.)
My younger self would be so disappointed.
I’ll just have to hope all the shoes I’ve bought her will be of some comfort….
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Tagged International Man of Mystery
(ASOS skirt, Christian Louboutin shoes, ancient sweater, clutch bag “borrowed” from my mum)
Now, I know this didn’t start out as an outfit blog, but my life seems to have entered into one of those unfortunate phases where nothing much is happening, move along folks, nothing to see here.
Wait a minute: that’s not really a “phase”, is it? That’s “my life”. Ah.
This week’s “nothing much happening” is mostly down to our current lack of transport. We still haven’t managed to replace Terry’s car yet, and this week mine managed to fail its MOT quite spectacularly, so we’re starting to wonder if someone has placed some kind of car-related curse on us. We’re also starting to feel a bit like teenagers again, because we’re now having to call my dad anytime we want to go somewhere (which, thankfully isn’t all that often on account of us not actually having “real” jobs.) and ask him for a lift. I don’t know about Terry, but I’m also planning to ask for an increase in my pocket money. And a pony.
The good news is that my car can be fixed, and will be back in action at some mysterious time in the future, and we’re going to look at a replacement for Terry’s this afternoon, so hopefully things will be back to normal soon. Until then, you get random photos of my outfits: have a good weekend, everyone!
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(Primark trench, J Crew trousers, Next shoes.)
I quit the gym. Yes, Others, YOU WIN, with your space-invading ways, your whistling and your general other-ness . You can have the gym, see if I care. Although, before you go feeling all smug about having chased me away, let me just tell you that it was actually the music that did it. And, honestly, I have pretty broad tastes when it comes to music. I can put up with a lot. But there is one genre of music I absolutely CANNOT STAND, and it is cheesy 70s disco music. Which was unfortunate, because that was seriously ALL our gym ever wanted to play when I was there.
Ladies Night would be followed by Le Freak, which would be followed by That’s The Way I Like It... and I know it’s not 70s disco, but I’d had the modest aim of getting through the rest of my life without ever having to hear Swing Out Sister’s Breakout ever again, and I had to listen to it every single time I went to the gym. Every time. And it wouldn’t have been so bad if they’d just been playing at a reasonable “gym” level, but no: that crap was turned up to max volume, so loud that I couldn’t even drown it out with my own music, although God knows, Lady Gaga and I certainly gave it our best shot.
So I quit the gym.
It’s OK, though, those of you who are about to call me out on my laziness: I may have quit the gym, but I haven’t quite exercise. No, in a move which is every bit as amazing to me as it is to anyone else (I’m the girl who “forgot” her gym kit so many times the gym teacher actually forgot she was even in the class. And who spent one memorable baseball game in high school waiting until it was almost her turn to bat, before deftly slipping out of the line and proceeding to the end of it. And doing that over and over and over again, until the game ended without her ever having actually made it to the front of that line. I didn’t learn much about baseball but I did learn how to be, er, inventive, let’s say.), I have become an outdoor runner.
Now, those of you with long memories will remember that I’ve actually been running outdoors for quite some time now. I hadn’t been doing it consistently, though: the first year of my outdoor running experience was the year of Snowmaggedon, after all. No one was running anywhere in that. Or after that, either, because the snow melted, but I managed to convince myself that I was far too delicate a flower to be able to cope with the cold, so I just didn’t. I went back to the gym, instead. And by “back to the gym” I mean “sometimes I would go to the gym, but most of the time I wouldn’t.”
Fast forward to this winter, though. I’d been running outside for much of the summer, and had assumed that I’d give it up in winter again. This winter was a mild one, though, so somehow I managed to keep it up. December passed, and so did January, and I was still managing to get out a couple of times a week at least, which is more often than I’d been dragging myself to the gym. By the time we got to February, and I STILL hadn’t managed to find a good enough reason to stop, my mind was made up: I would quit the gym.
So I did.
“The only reason I can imagine going back,” I told Terry, “would be if it snowed again. And if it does, I’ll just re-join!”
The week that I cancelled my membership, it snowed. In March. Honestly people, my power to influence weather patterns is freaky, it really is.
Anyway, that little blip aside, I’m still managing to keep up my routine. No one crowds my space, whistles in my ear, or douses themselves in a full bottle of aftershave before getting onto the machine right next to mine, even although the rest of the gym is completely empty. I haven’t had to listen to Swing Out Sister since November. It’s all good, in other words.
Now, let’s just see how much snow THIS winter will bring!
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( Miss Selfridge via eBay dress; Vivienne Westwood for Melissa shoes; mystery cardigan, eBay sunglasses)
Jenni tagged me to do one of those “Seven Random Things About Me” posts a couple of weeks ago, and I started it, then quickly realised that because I’ve done these a few times now, there’s almost nothing about me that’s been left unshared here. Well, nothing that’s FIT to be shared, at least. I mean, I could bore you rigid with a lot of really mundane stuff (but then, that’s what Twitter’s for, surely?), and then there are all my deep dark secrets, obviously, which I just can’t share, but other than that, I got nothing.
OR SO I THOUGHT.
Once I got started, I realised that there actually is no limit to the rubbish I can talk about myself, so here are seven random facts about moi: I have a horrible feeling I may have already “shared” some of these (or maybe even all of them) at some point, so please just humour me, the way you would an elderly relative who is losing her marbles.
1. I have never had a pedicure or a massage in my life…
… and I probably never will. I just can’t stand the thought of people touching my feet, and I’m so bad at making smalltalk that any other kind of treatment which involves strangers, you know, touching me, is horrifying to me, purely because of the socially awkward way I would handle it. I mean, I’m sure massages are super-relaxing for NORMAL people, but for the shy people amongst us, wine fulfils the same purpose, and is cheaper.
2. But I wear make-up every day, even if I’m not planning on leaving the house.
If you’d ever seen me without it, you’d understand why.
3. When I was laid off from my job as a reporter, I applied to work as a salesperson in a designer clothing store, purely for the sake of the staff discount.
I got the job (after one of the toughest interviews I’ve ever had, actually), but turned it down in favour of a job in PR which had twice the salary and made use of my mad writing skillz. It didn’t allow me to get 30% off designer fashion, though, so obviously that sucked.
4. I have developed a mild phobia about escalators
I’m secretly convinced that the moving stair is somehow going to suck me in and EAT ME. So while other people are able to step onto it without even breaking stride, I hop around at the top for ages, waiting for exactly the right minute to step on without being sucked in. And when that moment arrives, I kind of grab the handrail, close my eyes and jump, often whilst emitting a girlie little “ooh!” sound. It must be REALLY annoying for anyone waiting to get on behind me…
5. And I’m terrified of lifts
I think most people are, though, to at least some extent, aren’t they? And if they’re not, they should be. Because lifts are scary.
6. I have had cosmetic surgery…
… to remove two (non-malignant) moles from my face, which I’d hated my entire life. It cost a small fortune, and they both grew back after a couple of years, and had to be removed AGAIN, but it was still one of the best things I ever did, and I wish I could go back in time and have it done much sooner. They’ve both now been cut out at the root, and I’m told the chances of them returning a second time are slim, so naturally I’m expecting them to reappear any day now.
7. I am completely incapable of taking pain killers
I put them in my mouth, take a sip of water… and then I PANIC, freeze and sit there for five minutes with the pills still in my mouth and my eyes popping out of my head, terrified that if I swallow, I will surely choke to death. (I almost did choke to death once, incidentally, although not on painkillers, so every mealtime is an adventure for me now.) When I do finally muster the nerve to swallow them, one pill ALWAYS seems to get stuck halfway down my throat, and while that’s obviously not going to kill me, it does tell me that I was right to worry about it.
And there you have it: seven things that you didn’t really want to know, but which I told you anyway! If you read all the way to the end, you can consider yourself “tagged”…
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Our car was officially written off yesterday. I knew it would be, of course, but I’m still completely devastated. It doesn’t help that right before we got the email (yes, they told us by email. Presumably so that we wouldn’t sob down the phone to them?) confirming this, they’d told us by phone that there was a chance they might fix it, so I’d gotten my hopes up, only to have them dashed again a couple of hours later. So that sucked.
As Terry started to deal with the huge mountain of paperwork that followed this horrible episode, and I struggled to not to start crying again, however, we slowly became aware that the house was noisier than usual. There was banging. There was crashing. There was whining from Rubin, who seemed to be trying to communicate something to us. Hmmm.
Assuming that the various thudding noises were coming from a car in the street, and that Rubin probably just needed to, you know, relieve himself, I let him into the garden, and stood there for a few seconds, listening. Nope, no car stereo was pounding out obnoxious dance music, so I shrugged my shoulders and went back inside to resume my misery.
And the banging and thudding resumed, too.
So consumed were we with the horror of the whole car drama, that it took a particularly loud bang, followed by a volley of barking from Rubin, for us to decide that hey, maybe this was something we should investigate? The sounds did, after all, sound a lot like they were coming from inside the house, in classic horror movie style, so Terry headed downstairs, and I headed to the bedroom window, to peer out into the street.
And there he was. Nigel, the International Man of Mystery Next Door, had returned to us, a mere SIX YEARS after his last known appearance.
DUH-DUH-DUUUUUUH!
Or at least, we think he had returned to us. It’s been so long since I last laid eyes on TIMOM that I wouldn’t swear in a court of law, say, that the man spotted leaving the house next door yesterday evening was definitely our suspect, and Terry didn’t get a good look at him at all, but let’s just say that he met the suspect’s description. And had been in his house for at least 30 minutes, which does seem to confirm that this was either the Man of Mystery himself, or someone acting on his behalf. Let’s say it was him, though: it’ll make this post more interesting.
As for what Nigel – if, indeed, t’was he – was actually DOING inside the home he hasn’t visited for six years, well, who knows? What we DO know is that it involved a lot of banging, a bit of thundering up and down stairs, and was accomplished within the space of about 30 minutes or so, after which Nigel got into his car and drove off into the sunset. Can you bury a body in 30 minutes? Anyone?
What we ALSO know is that if Nigel ever does move back, we’ll have to either buy a new house, or cut off our ears, because damn, those walls are thin. And that dude is noisy, with the thundering on the stairs, and the burying of the bodies.
What is the meaning of this latest sighting, though, that’s what I want to know? Why would you own a house for six years, never bother to visit or maintain it, and then turn up one day, under cover of… dusk… spend 30 minutes crashing around, and then leave? What was he doing? Why did he come? Why NOW, after all this time? And why didn’t he mow his freaking lawn while he was there? So many questions. So little chance of them ever being answered.
For now, though, at least we know this: Nigel is out there. Alive. And one day, he may come back…*
(*But hopefully not until we’ve moved out, because like I say: THIN WALLS. INTOLERABLE.)
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Tagged International Man of Mystery
(Dress, River Island; shoes, Office c/o Idealo; clutch, stolen from my mum)
Thanks for all of your comments on my last post, everyone: I’m still feeling pretty craptastic about it all, to be honest, so here are some photos from the weekend, when, in a bid to try to take our minds off things, Terry and I took ourselves out for the traditional Easter treat of sushi. Now, as I knew that we’d be eating with chopsticks, dipping things into soy sauce, etc, I decided the very best choice of outfit for this would be a dress with a large off-white section right down the middle. Because there’s just no way I could mess THAT up, could I?
Well, folks, I didn’t mess it up. It wasn’t for the lack of trying, though. For reasons that are still unclear to me, my chair in the restaurant was much higher than Terry’s, and far too high for the table we were sitting at. This, combined with the fact that I was:
a) completely overdressed, as usual
b) wearing two large, red paper napkins (but hey! At least they matched my outfit!) tied around my neck, in an attempt to protect the cream dress from spillage.
and
c) having to kind of hunker over the table, so I was constantly talking down to Terry, as if he was a child and I a (very large) adult…
…all made me feel a bit like Alice in Wonderland, right after she drinks the bottle that makes her grow.
That aside, we did have a nice meal, and I returned home feeling quite pleased with myself that I’d managed not to spill anything on my dress: turns out there really IS a first time for everything! Except… not really. Because once we got home, we settled down to watch a movie, and I decided that now would be a good time to break out one of those chocolate eggs we’d been given. (Well, another one of those chocolate eggs, I mean. Because I was – and am – still feeling horrible about the car, and chocolate is good for shock, yes?)
Halfway through the movie, I glanced down at my front, and…
Yup, you guessed it – chocolate all over the white section of that dress. Damn.
The good news is that I managed to get the chocolate out without too much trouble, or, indeed, hysteria.
The bad news, of course, is that I’m obviously not quite as ready to be trusted in society as I’d hoped I was. And I will have to continue to get all dressed up, and then completely conceal my outfit by tying large tea-towels, or napkins, or tablecloths, or whatever else I can get my hands on, around my neck. Actually, come to think of it, I should probably just stop buying clothes, and wear sheets instead. Think of all the money I’d save!
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Last Thursday morning, Terry and I had some errands to run. We set out early, and it was a bit of a stressful morning, for one reason or another, so by the time we got back into the car and headed for home, I was just looking forward to putting the kettle on, pouring myself a giant mug of coffee, and relaxing a bit.
Terry was driving, and I’d picked up a leaflet in one of the places we’d visited, so I started flipping through it to pass the time. I was so engrossed in this, that I didn’t even see the other car. In fact, I didn’t see anything at all. One minute I was sitting there, reading my leaflet and half-listening to the music on the car stereo, the next I was being flung forward in my seat, and then snapped back by the safety belt. There was no time to think, and yet somehow there was all the time in the world to register the look of shock on Terry’s face, hear him shout out something – I don’t remember what – and feel the sickening moment of impact as the bonnet crumpled in front of us and the thought this is it, this is how we’ll die flashed through my head.
The car came to a halt. The music played on, inappropriately loud.
Then I started screaming.
“Oh my God!” I shouted. “Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!” And I think I would probably have kept on shouting it – in fact, I think there’s a small part of my head which has been just repeating that phrase, over and over ever since it happened – if Terry, having established that there was nothing physically wrong with me, hadn’t interrupted my hysteria by getting out of the car.
By the time I’d calmed down enough to take a look around, the two people from the other car had, thankfully, also gotten out to inspect the damage, so I could see right away that no one was hurt. Even without looking, though, I could tell that our poor car wasn’t going to be so lucky, and as I sat there and looked at the buckled bonnet, I was all of a sudden completely blindsided by the horror of it all.
First came the ‘what ifs’. What if we’d been going faster? What if the seatbelts had failed? What if Rubin had been in the car, and had been thrown forward with the impact? And, of course, the biggie: what if we’d been hurt, or worse? What if someone else had?
The ‘what ifs’ were quickly followed by the ‘if onlies’. If only we hadn’t gone out that morning, or at that time. If only I hadn’t decided that THAT day was the only possible day to run those errands. If only I’d actually stopped and bought those flowers I’d seen in the supermarket, rather than just stopping to admire them: then we’d have been a few minutes later than we were, and we’d have driven home, drank our coffee and got on with our day, just as we always do.
But I didn’t. And so instead of that blissfully normal day, I found myself sitting by the side of the road, in our once-beautiful car, which was now completely destroyed. And as I sat there, I discovered that my mind could just not compute this. I couldn’t fathom how something could be so perfect one second, and so utterly ruined the next. And I thought that this could have been me, or Terry, or one of the two people in the other vehicle, and I started to sob. It was a long time before I stopped.
* * *
The other car had just one small scratch on the bumper.
Ours is a write off.
* * *
Because of the holiday weekend, we had to spend the next four days waiting to find out whether it was repairable or not. In fact, we still don’t have the official verdict from the insurance company, but the garage have told us the cost of the repairs, and it’s more than the car’s worth, so it doesn’t take a genius to work out what will happen there.
Of course, it’s just a car. The main thing is that no one was hurt: I’ve been being told this all weekend, and it’s one of those things that really goes without saying (Although, seriously, if one more person tells me that “worrying won’t help!” I will scream. I don’t think anyone worries or feels bad about things because they think it will help: you just can’t help but feel bad sometimes, when something bad has happened.) It could have been worse. Cars can be replaced. No one was hurt. But honestly? I still feel absolutely wretched about it. I loved that car. I wrote before, back when we bought it, about how I tend to get emotionally attached to inanimate objects, especially cars, and although I told myself I wouldn’t do it this time, I seem to have failed in that endeavour, because I can’t even think about it without wanting to cry.
One second, everything was normal, and fine. The next second, everything was ruined.
And as bad as it was, it could have been so much worse.
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