It’s happening again. A white van pulls up outside a house in our street – the same house, in fact, that I last encountered Van Men in front of the last time. It disgorges a group of Neanderthal workmen. The radio is switched on, and turned up to the "louder than hell" setting. The White Van Men begin work. I, on the other hand, am forced to immediately stop working, and begin pacing frantically around the house muttering ‘WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE?" to Terry (who doesn’t answer because as usual he’s plugged into his computer watching a video and is therefore not able to hear either the cacophony of sound, or my ranting. ‘Lucky Terry!’ I hear you say…).
As you may have guessed by now, this kind of thing really winds me up. I mean, why should I be forced to listen to someone’s crap music all day long? Why should I miss Neighbours just because the White Van Men can’t bear to miss Lunchtime Drivetime on the radio? Why does no one have any manners any more? Why do assholes think that everyone needs to hear their music? WHY?!
Now, in situations like this, I normally like to ask myself "What would Jack Bauer do?" But because the answer to that would probably be "burst into the street and kill every last one of them without even batting an eye", I’m just going to put my orange earplugs in and sit it out until it’s time to go to the dentist (only one more hour to tote the weary peg teeth!). If the music is still blaring away by the time Neighbours comes on though, I won’t hesitate to torture them.
OK, I have to come clean here: the sighting of Nigel, the International Man of Mystery Next Door referenced in this entry actually happened AN ENTIRE WEEK AGO. A whole week ago, and I didn’t even tell you. I hold my head in shame, people, I really do. Anyway, because I know you all care deeply about the issue, and also because Terry and I have been watching a lot of old episodes of Spooks recently, which has freaked me out afresh, here it is…
Last week, after almost a year – A YEAR – without being seen, Nigel TIMOMND appeared briefly at the house, and when I say “briefly” I mean “he walked in, got his mail, slammed around inside the house for five minutes (probably searching for bugs) and then disappeared again”. The day before, however, we’d been visited by yet another “heavy” in a suit, who asked a lot of questions about the whereabouts of our Man of Mystery and then muttered something about Nigel falling behind on his car finance. Not 24 hours later, the IMOM paid his first visit in a year. I suspect the two events are not unconnected, but then I also suspect Nigel is totally working for M15 or something, and now that I’ve written that I’ll probably be picked up by the Spooks, tortured and then killed. For real.
If you don’t hear from me again, you’ll know what happened. Well, you probably won’t actually, because They’ll track you down to and interrogate you about What You Know. Yeah, I should stop watching Spooks…
Tagged International Man of Mystery
Now, don’t quote me on this, but I think I may have encountered the strangest PR firm ever this week. It’s not so much the information they’ve been sending me – actually, the information is relevant to my current Huge Project O’Doom, and I’m assuming they’ve been sending it for this reason (I didn’t contact them, so I don’t know) – it’s the manner in which they send it that’s so very strange. For instance:
1. All emails come to me from a Yahoo email address (complete with numbers on the end because they couldn’t get the name they wanted, obviously. Not that the name they’ve picked has anything to do with their firm, as far as I can tell….) which gives absolutely no clue as to the sender’s identity. The ‘From’ line in the email is just this email address. Obviously this doesn’t make me think their emails are spam AT ALL.
2. There is no signature on the email to give me a clue as to the identity of my mysterious correspondent – nor have they bothered to introduce themselves. This helps me build a relationship with the PR, you see. Oh no, wait – it doesn’t really, does it?
3. There is rarely any accompanying text with the press releases attached to the emails. When there is, it will only ever be a couple of lines, all in lower case with no punctuation, saying something like “this is for you i will send more when i have it” This gives me lots of incentives to open the mysterious files attached! I love a good mystery, me!
4. The subject line is normally something like: FW: FW: FW: FW: Edinburgh. Again, no way could that be mistaken for spam.
5. The reason for all the forwards? Well, rather than having the press release they’re sending me approved by their client and then creating a new email in which to send it to me, they simply forward on the email discussion they’ve been having with said client. This is nice of them, as it gives me the opportunity to find out things that they don’t actually want me to know. Thanks, Bad PRs!
6. The press releases they send are sometimes in .pdf format. Sometimes I have to open a zipped folder to get to them. There is never any indication as to what these files will contain, so sometimes? I just don’t bother.
7. Further insight into the inner workings of the client’s company (and, indeed, the process they have gone through to create their press release) is given by the fact that rather than sending me a “clean” copy of the press release, they often send me the changes tracked version instead. Seriously, this has happened at least four times now.
And the press releases themselves? Well, here’s the strangest thing of all: they’re actually not that bad. And they do, at least have an “issued by XXXX on behalf of XXXX” line at the bottom, which was the only clue I ever had as to who these people are.
Another weird thing? Their client is actually quite a big name in their particular niche. I can’t help but wonder how much they’re paying to have someone forward me their internal emails, hmmm?
DISCLAIMER! This is just one rogue PR firm I’m talking about here! All other PRs are fab!
Tagged journalism, PR
Well, the last remaining temporary veneer bit the dust – or rather, the bread, because that’s what I was eating at the time – about an hour ago. I’m now the proud owner of not one, but two freaky looking teeth, and with just six short weeks to go until my wedding day, am now uglier than I have ever been in my entire life – and I’m including those lost years with the poodle perm and the Liam Gallagher eyebrows in that statement.
Seriously, I look absolutely repulsive, and I’m not saying that in an attention-seeking, "tell me I’m pretty!" kind of way, but in a "no, I really do look repulsive" kind of way. Even the dog won’t look me in the eye at the moment. And OK, I know it’s really superficial to be whining about my teeth when as we all know, it’s inner beauty that counts – INNER BEAUTY, people – but GOD, I wish I could hide in a darkened room until Monday.
Just to add to all the fun, the PEG TOOTH and its pal, having been hidden from the world for 16 years now, aren’t exactly filled with joy to be feeling the wind upon their faces again. They’re both really, really sensitive: even breathing in sharply is painful, so at least I won’t be tempted to hit the Ben & Jerry’s for a while, even although I SO RICHLY DESERVE IT.
My torment will end on Monday at 1pm. However, a new fear has now risen it’s ugly head – or ugly teeth, rather. The new fear: what if the new veneers fall off too? What if they fall off on the day of the wedding, and I have to get married looking like this? Would it be reasonable to invite my dentist to the wedding, do you think, just in case? And to include the words "even if the PEG TOOTH comes back" in Terry’s wedding vows?
Figures I would wait until the month before the wedding to get all Bridezilla, doesn’t it? And I was doing so well, too…
OK, last post about my teeth, I promise*. Even although I know how utterly gripped by the whole saga you all are.
* Until Monday, obviously.
Yes folks, as you can probably guess from the title, it was a bit of a weddingy weekend Chez Amber. I picked up my wedding dress from the dressmaker (who, by the way, hasn’t called me "slutty" for ages now, so it’s all good), and paced around my parents’ living room in it for a good long while. We took Maria (flower girl and niece) to my parents’ house to let her try on her dress. We talked obsessively about what the last dance music should be. We did not come to a decision. We searched the house for my missing birth certificate, but couldn’t find it so had to go and get a replacement. We would have gone to Moss Bros to get Terry’s suit fitted, but Terry wrecked his knee while running at 7am on Saturday morning (don’t ask) so that put paid to that idea. And, other than that, we pretty much sat around going "OMG what if no one comes to the wedding?!" Or rather, I did.
You see, last week, the invitations went out. It was both exciting and scary at the same time: exciting because, WOO HOO WE ARE GETTING MARRIED! Scary, because…. well, what if no one comes? WHAT IF, people? So far, I think about 8 people have said they’ll come. This is not a lot of people though, so I’m starting to imagine scenarios in which I arrive at the venue and there’s JUST US because no one else came, because probably they all hate us or something. Gulp.
It’s all starting to feel very "real" now. And while I’m starting to get excited, it’s all a bit difficult because I still have a huge Project O’Doom to finish, and until that’s done I’ll barely have time to even think about the wedding, let alone plan for it, or get excited about it. My POD deadline is February 28th, though, and I think there will be only one more POD to go after that before I can finally draw a line under the workworkwork that’s been going on since the start of the year and actually, you know, clean my house and plan my wedding. Eeek.
Roll on March…
Oh God, how the redhead haters would love this one…It used to be, you see, that I just had ginger hair. Now? Well, now I have ginger teeth to match. Yes folks, my teeth now match my hair, and while I’m all about accessorising, this is a bit much for even me…
You will, of course, have worked out by now that this is yet another entry about those bloody veneers. Sorry. It’s been a traumatic time for me, though, so please try and bear with me. You see, yesterday, as I left the dental surgery, my dentist warned me that my temporary veneers were so fragile that they were liable to just drop right off at the slightest provocation. What she didn’t tell me was that they were so porous that they’d instantly assume the exact colour of the very first thing I ate after having them fitted. This was particularly unfortunate given that that first thing happened to be…. a bowl of tomato soup.
I actually thought I was being clever with the tomato soup. “Ha!” I thought, slurping away through my still numb lips and gums, and looking a lot like a stroke victim. “My temporary veneers will not fall out! I will eat only soup, and thus will keep them good n’ strong for the full two weeks. I will be THE BEST at having temporary veneers!” Oh stupid, stupid girl.
We were at Terry’s mum’s for dinner (Soup! Orange soup! That I had brought with me because I am SO DAMN CLEVER. Not.) so it wasn’t until a few hours later, when we got home, that I realised what had happened. I went into the bathroom, approached the mirror and, preparing to examine my new veneers now that the Angelina Jolie lips had subsided (would’ve quite liked to keep those, actually), gave myself a big, cheesy smile. And actually? “Cheesy” was the right word: my two veneers were now roughly the colour of Red Leicester. Damn.
I tried to clean them (very gently) with toothpaste. I tried using mouthwash. I contemplated putting a Crest Whitestrip on them, but Terry convinced me that would probably make them turn blue or something, so I gave it up for the night and headed to bed, ready to re-commence battle in the morning. “I may have orange teeth now,” was my final thought before I drifted off into uneasy dreams (and when I say “uneasy”, let me just say I’m sure Kevin Federline featured in my dreams somehow last night, and that makes me feel kind of … dirty) “but at least it can’t get any worse.” HA!
So this morning I get up and head into the shower. As I’m blearily standing there, I reach out my tongue to touch the veneers (gently, natch) and reassure myself that the little guys have made it through the night. There was a small clicking sound, a sensation a lot like that nightmare I keep having, where I’m spitting out all my teeth, (Move over, K-Fed, I already know what tonight’s nightmare will be about) and I glanced down to see something very small and very, very orange lying between my feet. I mean, it was kind of hard to miss it. “Oh please don’t let it be the veneer from the PEG TOOTH, please don’t let it be the veneer from the PEG TOOTH” I muttered as I jumped out of the bath and approached the mirror.
It was the veneer from the PEG TOOTH.
Yes, folks, after 16 years and more than half of my life, this morning I once again found myself face to face with my old nemesis, the PEG TOOTH – and let me tell you, it wasn’t pretty. Oh hell, no.
I think I’m going to try and just forget my teeth for the next couple of weeks. (Hallelujah, I hear you cry). I could get the dentist to stick it back on again, but if that’s how easy it’s going to be to make it fall off again, there doesn’t seem to be much point: I don’t have time for daily visits to the dentist, and also: IT WAS ORANGE. So now, instead of two orange teeth, I have one PEG TOOTH, one orange tooth. I’m just going to grin and bear it (well, actually, I’m not going to grin. Grinning is the last thing I will be doing…) until the proper veneer is fitted.
I’m sure I’ll get used to wearing the bag over my head.
I hate Mondays. I particularly hate those Mondays, though, that kick off with me having two teeth ripped from my head. I mean, isn’t that just a totally sucky way to start the week?
Of course, it wasn’t actually my teeth that were ripped out of my head. No, it was my veneers. Yup, those ugly ass veneers are no more, and I have to say, as much as I hated them, there was a part of me felt a little bit sad as I cleaned them this morning for the last time. Well, I mean, they have been with me since I was sixteen. I’ve had those veneers for longer than I haven’t had them, if you know what I mean. I’ve had them for so long that I can’t really remember accurately what the teeth underneath look like, and I think this is the main reason I got so worried about today’s trip to the dentist. It wasn’t that I was scared of the pain: it was the fact that this face I’ve had for half of my life now was about to change permanently, and WHAT IF IT CHANGED FOR THE WORST?
Needless to say, it did not change for the worse. Well, I mean, it did – I have temporary veneers on at the moment, and the temporary veneers? Are yellow. Yel.low. So yellow, in fact, that I’ve just had to make a panicked call to the dentist saying ohmygodpleasetellmeIwillnotlooklikethisforever. They’re also really fragile, apparently, which means that I now have a couple of dozen cans of soup in the kitchen, and will be on what I call the Dental Diet for the next two weeks, eating only mushy foods, so that my temporary veneers don’t fall off, reavealing the PEG TOOTH in all its (un)glory. So I’ll also get to lose weight too – excellent!
What’s not so excellent? The way Terry has been totally taking the crap out of my droopy, “I’ve just been to the dentist” mouth. Why am I marrying him again?
In slightly better news, though, remember when Next were harrassing me by phone for no reason whatsoever? Well, I wrote to complain, and they have given me £25 to spend. Yay! Free stuff!
I’m going to the dentist on Monday. It’s costing me more than I earn in a month. I AM GOING TO DIE, people. TO. DIE. And it’s not that I’m scared of the dentist. Not really. I mean, sure, I get a little apprehensive about it, but it’s not like, say, going to the doctor’s, where they could take one look at you and give you five minutes to live now, is it? No, it’s not the horrific pain I fear: it’s The Ugly.
I’ve been afflicted with The Ugly since I was a kid with a bad poodle perm and an unfortunate dress sense. In fact, come to think of it, it was probably those things that caused The Ugly in the first place. Well, those and the PEG TOOTH, obviously. For yes, folks, I had the misfortune to be born with a PEG TOOTH. Actually, no, that’s not right: I wasn’t born with the PEG TOOTH. If I’d been born with it, a) I’d have been a mad crazy FREAK BABY WITH TEETH and b) It would have fallen out years ago, along with all of my other baby teeth. So no, I wasn’t born with it: it’s one of my adult teeth, but you wouldn’t really think it because a PEG TOOTH, for the benefit of the uninitiated, is a tooth so tiny it’s almost invisible to the naked eye. Mine is right next to my front teeth, and is – let’s not mince words here – ugly. UGLEEE. Or it was, anyway. I haven’t seen it for, ooh, about 14 years now, because the very second I was old enough, I took myself to the dentist and had some veneers fitted. Yes, I’m vain. SO?
Time passed. The PEG TOOTH was forgotten. Terry, for example, didn’t even know it had existed until a few months ago, when I noticed that the two veneers I’d had fitted (I had to have a veneer on the tooth next to it too, because the PEG TOOTH is so small one veneer wouldn’t have been enough for it) were looking a little bit the worse for wear, and when I say “worse for wear” I mean, “I’d rather wear a bag on my head than be seen looking this”. And, bearing in mind that in less than two months time I will be having wedding pictures taken which will be on display FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE, it was clear to me that drastic action would need to be taken.So I went to see the dentist.
The dentist took one look at me, and pound signs started flashing before her eyes. Seriously, I could see them. “Both veneers will have to be removed,” she told me. “Then replaced. We’ll do it on Monday, so you can have no money right before your wedding. Have a nice day, now!” Damn. I knew she was right, though. I mean, I’m at the point here where I’m seriously contemplating cancelling the wedding photographer, or making him sign something to the effect that he will not under any circumstances take pictures of me in which my teeth are visible, so Monday it is.
I am troubled, though. On Monday, the existing veneers will be removed and replaced with temporary ones. What if something goes wrong? What if she tries to take the veneer out and the PEG TOOTH comes with it, and then I can’t get new veneers because there will be NO TEETH to stick them to? What if while she’s removing the veneer, she breaks off both my front teeth by mistake? I mean, she’s promised she won’t, but what if she does? WHAT IF, people?!
Also: the temporary veneers will be very, very fragile. What if they break, and everyone gets to see my PEG TOOTH?
I’m troubled. Other things that trouble me about the dentist:
1. When she’s looking in my mouth, and then she turns away to get something, or to do something, and I don’t know how long she’s going to be. Am I supposed to just lie there with my mouth wide open until she turns back to me? What if she’s cleaning something, say, and it takes her five minutes, but I don’t know that’s how long it’s going to take? I’m just going to be lying there with my mouth wide open, like an idiot, aren’t I? What must that look like? (Answer: pretty freakin’ hilarious is my guess).
2. I wonder if they have CCTV in the surgeries, and if maybe when the dentists have their annual Christmas party or whatever, they show back the tapes of all the people lying there with their mouths open while the dentist’s back is turned? God, what I wouldn’t give for a copy of THAT tape…
3. When she’s finished working on my teeth and starts talking to me about the next stage of treatment, but doesn’t put the seat back into the “upright” position, so I’m just lying there flat on my back looking up at her while she’s talking to me. That’s kind of funny, isn’t it? But if I sit up, and the chair is still reclined all the way back, and there’s nothing to support my back… well, THEN I’m just sitting there with my legs straight out in front of me, like a doll or something, and IT STILL LOOKS WEIRD.
4. Oh God, I’m going to totally think about this now when I’m in The Chair on Monday, aren’t I? And it’s going to make me want to laugh, and what if I start laughing while she’s injecting me, and the laughter makes my head move, and she, I don’t know, injects me in the eyeball by mistake or something.
5. I AM GOING TO DIE! Seriously!
PEG TOOTH. AAAAARGGH!
Right, that’s it, I’m writing off February. It’s OK, really: I mean, February is always a bit of a write-off anyway, but this year? This year is a doozy, for no sooner had I filed the copy for Huge Project O’Doom Number One, leaving me with only HPODs 2 and 3 to deal with, than I get commissioned for… go one guess! Did you guess “a huge Project O’ Doom”? Congratulations, you guessed right! There seems to be some weird law that states I must never have any less than three HPODs on my plate at any one time, GOD. I cannot even explain how stressed I am at this point. I’m seriously not joking when I say I haven’t cleaned my house in three weeks now. Or, you know, LEFT my house much. My deadline for HPOD3 is February 28th. Thirty one days after that? I get married. MARRIED. Yes, folks, there’s less than two months to go now until the wedding. I really should start planning that, shouldn’t I?
Of course, I have been doing SOME amount of wedding planning. Of course I have.
Things I have done to plan the wedding:
- Ordered almost every piece of makeup Benefit make. Yes, I am officially Benefit’s bitch, and I? LOVE IT.
- Bought shoes for the honeymoon
Things my mum has done to plan the wedding:
- Everything else.
So, yes, thanks mum! You rock! I suck, but it’s totally not my fault because OH MY GOD THE STRESS. I mean, last night Terry and went out for our Valentine’s Day dinner, purely because it was the only window of opportunity we had, there being no chance AT ALL that I will be able to leave the house, or even my computer, again until March now. So, yes happy Valentine’s Day, everybody! Hope your February’s better than mine…
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