August tomorrow, then, folks – almost the end of the summer already. (WHERE DID IT GO?!) Soon I’ll be sharpening my pencils, packing up my satchel and putting on my blazer and tie, ready for another new school year. Except, no, I won’t be doing that at all, will I? No, because I’m thirty freaking one, aren’t I? Try telling that to the random people who like to stop me and buy one make comments about my age,though. They all think I’m still at school, apparently. I kid you not.
It happened again, today. I was standing at the checkout in WH Smith, buying a Grace Dent novel (which, OK, was really written for teenagers, but I didn’t know it at the time. And it was totally in the General Fiction section.) a Really Useful Box (I have a number of these boxes. I keep my makeup in them, organised by skincare/face products/eyes and lips and they are, like, really useful. This latest one will hold my nail polish, because I am THAT kind of crazy. Oh yes.) and a 99p pink pencil case (FOR MY MAKEUP BRUSHES! I mean, what do you keep your makeup brushes in, I ask you?) when I realised that someone was standing so close behind me that I could actually feel their breath on the back of my neck. I hate that.
"What are you buying those for?" demanded the newcomer (a female) suspiciously. "Are you going back to school or are you going back to college?" (Now, even this strikes me as strange. I mean, why would she care? Do people really ask strangers stuff like this? "People like to start conversations with children," said Terry when I told him this story. BUT I AM NOT A CHILD! Please, people: NOT. A. CHILD. Yes, even although I sometimes behave like one.)
"I’m not going back to either of them," I replied, bemused. "I finished school quite a long time ago, actually." I was going to go on to explain the whole "I am really anal about the organisation of my makeup" thing, but really, why should I have to explain myself to complete strangers? Especially ones who are looking at me funny.
"Really? Did you?" asked the neck-breather, giving me a look that clearly said "I don’t believe you, you dirty rotten liar". I quickly paid and moved away, my precious pink items safely stowed in my bag. I mean, it’s always flattering when people mistake you for a teenager but I’m thinking I may have gone too far with my "buying of teenage fiction" thing, no? In my defense, though, I am a huge fan of Grace Dent’s Big Brother blog, and, because I am stupid and not really "down" with what the kids are into these days, I didn’t actually know she wrote teen fiction, too. Still, it would honestly never occur to me to question a complete stranger on their purchases in a store, you know? Is it just me?
Speaking of dirty rotten liars (which we weren’t really, but hey), remember the eBay seller whose dog ate my boots? Well, you will never believe it – I certainly didn’t – but the dog has miraculously regurgitated the boots! Of course by "miraculously regurgitated the boots" I actually mean "that didn’t happen at all, but it’s no less believable than what the seller is telling me, so hey, let’s go with it."
So, last time on "The Dog Ate My Boots", the seller had said that she would send me a cheque for the £3.20 she owed me, and I had said that no, she wouldn’t send me a cheque, because I couldn’t accept one for that amount. So, yesterday morning, she sent me a cheque for £3.50. Groan.
I have to admit that it was sheer bloody mindedness that made me pursue this. I am poor – oh, so poor! – but not poor enough to be in desperate need of the £3.50. However, I’m not much of a one to tolerate fools gladly, either, and this woman clearly thought I came down in the last shower, so I emailed her and carefully explained the difference between "No, I cannot accept a cheque" and "Sure, send me a cheque!"
Two hours later, an email flooded in. It seems that, in the short time that elapsed between receiving my email and replying to it, the seller had somehow managed to have the boots re-heeled. They are now as good as new, apparently, and will be on their way to me today! Phew! Looks like the dog only chewed the very tips of the heels after all, eh? What a stroke of luck.
I’m still trying to decide whether I should give her a big fat "negative" feedback for all of this (if and when the boots arrive, of course). Meanwhile, I am struck once again by the sheer stupidity of strangers.
It looks like I’m going to have to set up a whole new category for my blog, folks, and that whole new category will have to be called something like "The Ones Where Terry Gets Stopped by the Police For No Reason." Or something.
This weekend, you see, Terry got stopped by the police. Again. For no reason. Again. I dunno, I guess he just looks like a criminal or something (In which case I hate to think what’s going to happen the next time we try to board a plane…) or maybe there’s some kind of sign on the back of the car that only cops can see, saying "HI, I’M TERRY – STOP ME AND HARASS ME!"
This time the police in question actually admitted they had stopped him for no particular reason, which is, you know, progress of sorts, I guess. Terry was on his way to Ben Nevis, which he has now climbed/conquered/"bagged"/whatever the hell it is that people do with mountains. Anyway, to get to Ben Nevis in time to climb it and get back home before bedtime (it was a school night, you see), he had to leave at stupid o’clock. Having picked up his two friends, he was proceeding in an orderly manner along the road when he noticed the police doing their now characteristic about-turn in order to follow him. They probably put out an APB too, or maybe I just watch too many cop shows?
Within a few short seconds they had, once again, pulled him over. Luckily this time it was just Good Cop who approached him (as opposed to Bad Cop and Bad Cop, who dealt with him the last time); Good Cop had a short chat with The Accused before telling him that they’d basically pulled him over because they’d noticed three young guys in car (*gasp* Discrimination!) in the early hours of the morning, and they wanted to make sure they hadn’t been drinking, or doing something else illegal. Because, obviously young men + car = CRIMINALS.
Clearly Terry & Co. had not been drinking, or, indeed, doing any other kind of Bad Stuff, so the police let them go with a friendly wave and a smile. I fear Terry is a Marked Man now, though. How thrilling!
Incidentally, even although the rear lights on Terry’s car are exactly the same as they were the last time the police decided to pick on him (this being because Terry took the car to the MOT centre as required, and they told him that yes, they had checked the lights as part of the MOT, and no, there was not one single thing wrong with them, and yes, the police probably were just picking on him for the sheer hell of it) the cops who stopped him this time didn’t even mention the lights. Nevertheless, Terry is now carrying a note from the MOT centre with him at all times, confirming that the car is legal to drive. It might come in handy the next time he’s pulled over by The Law.
Now, I didn’t think people actually used the "the dog ate my homework" excuse in real life - but it seems that people do. And not just for homework, either.
So, a couple of weeks ago, I won a pair of boots on eBay. I use the word "won" pretty much literally here, in that I got them for the princely sum of £1.20, which I thought was a bit of a steal. Apparently the seller thought so too, for two weeks passed and … no boots.
Because it’s summer (well, sort of) and I have no pressing need for boots at the moment, I had actually forgotten all about them until something else arrived from eBay (yeah, I’ve been going through one of my periodic "buying things on eBay" phases) and I thought, "Hey!I wonder what happened to m’boots?"
So I sent the seller a quick email, asking if she’d posted them yet. Two minutes later, I got a response, and you’ll never guess what?
Her dog ate my boots!
I mean, I guess she could be telling the truth. If I had a pound for every pair of shoes Rubin ate when he was a puppy, I’d have… well, I’d have £3 by now. But that’s not the point. Even if the dog did eat the boots, when was the seller going to tell me about it, I wonder? Did she want my £1.20 (plus £2 postage) that badly that she was just going to sit tight and hope I forgot all about it? Apparently so, for she still has it. Says Paypal "won’t let her" refund it to me. And, to be fair, she did offer to send me a cheque for the amount, but God, do people still use cheques? For real? And would you get in your car and drive all the way to the bank for the sake of £3.20? I wouldn’t. (No more than I’d list a pair of boots on eBay, wrap them and take them to the post office for £3.20, for that matter. And here I think we have the crux of the matter.) I mean, I don’t even get out of bed for less than £4…
So, no boots for me. And no £3.20 either. Maybe my "dog" will jump onto my computer and leave that seller a big far negative feedback, hmmm?
So, on the last day of our honeymoon we broke the house.
For once, it wasn’t my fault. No, this particular random act of stupidity was all Terry’s, and even although Terry will probably kill me when he reads this, I’m going to tell you about it anyway because it was totally NOT MY FAULT. For once.
We actually broke the house on our last night in Lanzarote. We’d spent the afternoon at the pool, and, for reasons that still escape me, Terry decided to top up the water levels in said pool while I showered and got ready to go out for dinner. After dinner we came home and drank the rest of the bottle of champagne that was in the fridge, and then we were drunk. As skunks. It was at this point that Terry went outside and discovered that he’d left the hose he’d been using to "top up" the pool running the whole time we’d been at dinner. The pool was well and truly topped up. The water tank in the house? Was not.
Because we were drunk however (and also: stupid) we totally failed to make the connection between these two events. The slow trickle of water remaining was just enough for me to remove my makeup (because you should never go to bed without removing your makeup, kids – Amber’s top tip of the day) and flush the loo once. After that we just shrugged and went to bed, hoping that it would all magically be fixed by morning.
It was not all magically fixed by morning. In fact, there was no water AT ALL by morning. Not even a trickle. We drove down to the mall in Puerto del Carmen to use their bathrooms:
It was a pretty expensive bathroom stop, I’ll tell ya. Then we came home to phone the owner of the house and tell him that, whoops, we broke it.
The owner of the house called a maintenance guy, who turned up thirty minutes later, by which point I was already in need of another bathroom trip, and Terry was hiding his wallet and hoping to God that the man would be able to fix the water.
The man was not able to fix the water. "There’s absolutely nothing I can do to fix this water," said the man, before explaining that we’d drained the tank, and would now need to wait for it to refill. The problem with that? Well, it was Sunday. The water tanks in Lanzarote don’t get refilled on a Sunday. It’s like, "on the seventh day, the water tanks rested" or something. So we were now facing an entire day without water – and given that our flight didn’t leave until 11pm, we hadn’t showered since the night before and would be spending the day in the hot n’ sweaty sun, that kind of sucked.
There was only one thing to do. We had to get the hell out of the house, so we packed our suitcases as quickly as we could (which wasn’t very quickly, really, given that I had all that Zara haul to find room for) then we hit the road, Jack. We spent the day wandering aimlessly around, from public bathroom to public bathroom, and finally ended up at the beach at Playa Honda, which is where we discovered the absolute best thing to do if you ever find yourself in Lanzarote with nothing to do. So, here it is:
1. Drive to Playa Honda.
2. Park up at the part of the beach which is right next to Arrecife airport. Don’t worry, you’re not going to be sunbathing on it.
3. Walk until you see this structure:
4. These are the landing lights for the airport runway, which is now just a few metres behind you. You should be able to smell the engine fuel and see the sand whipping up a storm every time one of the planes take off. I’m not even joking.
5. Walk some more until you are standing right at the end of the landing lights structure.
I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned this here, but I am a bit of a Harry Potter fan. I mean, I say "a bit of a fan" – my dog has a freaking Gryffindor scarf, for God’s sake. I think you can probably see where I’m coming from here.
I was not always a Harry Potter fan. I got into the series late, jumping on the bandwagon at Book 4, having previously assumed that, like most of the bandwagons I have known, it would be one of those things that the whole world unaccountably goes mad for, and I can’t stand. Like Princess Diana for instance, or Little Britain. God, I hate Little Britain.
Anyway, so I ignored the first three Harry Potter books, and would probably have continued to ignore them to this day (I can be quite dense like that, you see. That’s how I missed out on The Office when it was actually on TV, and then had to watch it all on DVD and then go around telling everybody about this absolutely hilarious new show I’d discovered, when they’d already seen it months ago.) had it not been for the fact that when Book 4, The Goblet of Fire, came out, the newspaper I was working for at the time was given a review copy.
Now, I love me some free stuff, so even although the paper didn’t actually have a books section, I immediately created one (It carried a total of two reviews, both of which were written by me) and carried home Harry Potter. The book, I mean. Not the boy wizard. That would just have been weird.
By the time I reached the end of the first chapter, I was hooked. I read it in two days, stopping only to, you know, go to work, and then, when I finally reached the end, I went out and bought the first three books, which I read back to back. Then I read book 4 again. Now, several years down the line, I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve read those books. Or, I could – but you would laugh. They’ve been my solace in times of stress, and have never failed to make me feel better. I have cried over some of the deaths and discussed the plot lines for hours with the many other Potter fans I know (I’m actually really put out that Erin is getting married tomorrow and won’t be available to discuss this one with me. How could she!). Yes, I got it bad.
So, as you can probably imagine, given that the last ever book comes out tonight at midnight, I’m a very excited Amber right now. And also: a rather melancholy Amber. Because, after this book, that’s it. No more Potter – perhaps literally, for all I know. Maybe she’ll kill him off? (Pleasedon’tletherkillhimoff). It’s a very emotional time all round, people. Tonight, Terry and I are heading down to Asda with parents and friends, to stand in our last-ever midnight Potter queue, and wait for the precious, precious book to be placed in our hands. I think I might cry. Then I’m going to come home and spend the entire weekend reading it. I can’t wait.
So, a couple of weeks ago, I signed up for Twitter. Then I forgot about it.
I have no idea why I did it, really. I mean, it’s not like I’m not already on Facebook, four typepad blogs and five Shiny Media blogs. No, I totally expect that the world will want to hear me "tweet" (is that what it’s called? Is this thing on?) too.
Just to confirm – yes, this is still the honeymoon we took in April I’m talking about here. And yes, it has taken me a long time to finish writing about it, hasn’t it? Don’t worry, I’m nearly done. In fact, this entry? Is all about the second-last day of the holiday. The finish line approaches…praise the Lord.
So, on the second last day of the honeymoon we decided to do something we’d never done before and take a quad bike safari. Now, as far as "things we’d never done before" go, this wasn’t really a great call. I, you see, have been on a quad bike before. Back in the days when I worked weekends in a call centre (or "phone farm" as I affectionately think of it) my team managed to be the "Team of the Week" and our prize was a quad bike safari. ("Safari" probably isn’t the right word for this given that it happened in Fife, but you know what I mean). As it turned out, only me and two other women were able to make it: we had ourselves a lovely, ladylike drive through a forest, and even then I managed to crash my bike twice and almost killed myself. The resulting chest strain (how did I strain my chest? Who knows!) was the catalyst for The Great Hypochondriac Scare of 2001 – man, those were some fun times to be sure.
Despite all of this, it somehow didn’t occur to Terry and I that me + quad bike might not be such a good idea. Well, it occurred to me, obviously. Terry was all, "Nah, it’ll be fine, anyone can ride a quad bike" so we duly turned up at the quad bike place, handed over our money and were presented with two safety helmets and… two bandannas. Yes, bandannas.
Now, I don’t really do bandannas. I mean, do I look like a bandanna-wearin’ girl to you? But the man who was running the show was most insistent, so I reluctantly tied the bandanna (which looked like it hadn’t seen a wash since it graced its last sweaty brow) loosely around my head and donned the helmet. Now looking like a giant lollipop, I thought the worst of my trials were surely over.
They were not.
Next, the man presented me with a pair of safety goggles. I have no real problem with safety goggles per se, but here’s the thing: my eyes are really sensitive to sunlight. So sensitive, in fact, that I need to wear my sunglasses pretty much all the time. Yes, even in winter. (And sometimes in the house, but let’s not even go there). I think it’s probably something to do with the whole migraine thing, but who knows. The point was that we were in Lanzarote, the sun was blazing down, the safety goggles were clear plastic, and my dark sunglasses would not fit underneath them. "I’ll just wear my sunglasses, it’ll be fine," I told the Man in Charge. He looked at me and laughed here, but hell, he was wearing a bandanna, so I paid him no mind and prepared to meet my quad bike.
Prior to the safari, everyone participating had to go through a short "test" to make sure they were able to drive the bike safely. This involved us all getting on a bike and, one by one, following the Man in Charge out of the car park and on a short drive around the building, during which we were made to do a couple of figure eights, and other "so simple a child could do it" things.
Needless to say, Terry passed the test. In fact, everyone in the group passed the test. Except me, obviously. I did not pass the test. Shortly after I drove out of the car park, you see, I realised that quad bikes? Are heavy. To turn them, you need to really yank on those handlebars. I, unfortunately, am a weakling. The test didn’t go so good. Basically, I had no control over the bike whatsoever. "You have no control whatsoever," said the Man in Charge, when we returned to the group. "None." Terry actually filmed the M.I.C. saying this to me, but we can’t figure out how to get the video off his phone, and the sound’s more or less drowned out by Terry’s laughter, anyway, so you don’t get to see that. Sorry.
Anyway, all was not lost, and by that I mean, "all was totally lost, but I didn’t know it at the time". They wouldn’t let me drive a bike on my own (that whole "no control" thing kinda ruled that one out) but I could, said the M.I.C. ride on the back of Terry’s bike. Fine. We got onto the bikes, and it was at this point I realised that I was going to die. You see, Terry had hired a large bike. I? Am little. My feet did not touch the … those things that your feet rest on when you’re on a quad bike. The seat was so wide that I ended up perched there like an ant on a football, clinging onto Terry for dear life as I lurched from side to side, almost falling to my death with every turn of the wheel. And that was just on the way out of the car park.
It got worse, though.
Once we hit the "desert" (note: I don’t think it’s really a desert, but it’s rough, bumpy ground, anyway) it became even clear to me that I really was going to die. The bikes were now travelling fast, down dirt tracks and over hills. My butt was rarely on the seat. Sometimes my entire body was flying out behind Terry’s, like a flag. (OK, not totally true, but it felt like it). Terry, of course, found this hilarious. "YOU BETTER LET ME BUY THOSE GUCCI SUNGLASSES I SAW LAST NIGHT FOR THIS!" I shouted, over the sound of the blood pounding in my ears. Truthfully, those Gucci sunglasses were the only thing that got me through it. I’d noticed them in the "so expensive that Terry went pale every time we passed it" shop in town the night before. I had even had them removed from their glass case so I could try them on. Then I had been told to put them right back where I found them, because they were too damn expensive. I might have cried, a little.
That, though, was before Terry made me get on a quad bike and almost killed me.
"Isn’t this brilliant!" he shouted as we hurtled down a particularly steep hill, my body hanging over the side of the bike and skimming the ground "Gucci glasses!" I managed to shout back. "Guccigucciguccigucci". If I lived, they would be mine for sure, and this is what gave me the power to cling on for the TWO AND A HALF HOURS we were on that damn bike. Two and a half hours, during which my life passed before my eyes several times, and I reflected on how maybe it would have been better if we’d died during that crash landing after all. After the first hour, though, it got better. I somehow found my balance (ha!) and worked out how to stay on the thing without ripping the shirt from Terry’s back (although Terry totally would have deserved that). By the time we paraded, in single file, down Puerto del Carmen’s main drag, I was even starting to enjoy myself. I was feeling the quad bike love. I had even released my stranglehold on Terry’s neck, and was sitting up by myself. "Lookit me, looking cool on m’quad bike," I thought smugly, as the people on the street all stopped to stare. Most of the people were pointing and laughing too, but I figured they were just jealous.
They were not jealous.
It was only when we got off the bike, me now walking like a cowboy, that I realised my humiliation was still not complete. Because Terry and I had been at the front of the line of bikes, everyone else had to file past us to get back to the car park. As they did so, every single last one of them pointed and laughed at me. Just like the people on the main drag! We soon realised why. Having refused to wear the safety goggles provided, and having been hanging off the side of the bike for most of the ride, I was now coated in dust so thick you could have written your name in it. Actually, I’m sure Terry would have written his name in it, only he was too busy laughing. When I removed my sunglasses, there were two perfect white circles in my dusty brown face. I’m no stranger to looking bad, of course, but I think I surpassed myself here. Also: dust is absolute hell to get out of jeans, take it from me.
Everyone else, meanwhile? Was as fresh as a daisy. Swines.
I did get my new Gucci sunglasses, though. Well, I wasn’t going to pass up that opportunity now, was I?
It’s not often that we writers are catered for by the fashion industry, so when I saw this “Writing well is the best revenge” t-shirt over at Fussy.org, I just had to share. These are priced from $20, and are going straight onto my wish list. And is writing well the best revenge? Damn sure it is…
Two of the services we offer are proofreading and copyediting. To be perfectly honest, they’re my least favourite tasks, so they’re not services I promote very hard. Nevertheless, every now and then someone will contact me looking for a quote – and almost without exception, they will lie about the amount of text they need to have proofread/edited.
It happened again this morning. I answered the phone to find a woman on the other end who had two articles she wanted to have edited. She tried very hard to get me to give her a quote for this over the phone, making me explain over and over again that I’d really need to see the documents in question before I could give her an estimate.
The reason for this, of course, is simple. I charge by the hour, and while some copyediting jobs are straightforward, with only a minimal amount of changes required, some clients send me large swathes of text that are barely comprehensible, and which require a considerable amount of time and skill to untagle and turn into something resembling English.
“Oh, these are very short, though,” my caller insisted. “Only about 200 words each. They won’t take you very long at all, so surely you can give me an estimate?”
I politely asked her to send me the documents, promising to get back to her with the quote as quickly as possible. The documents duly arrived. Instead of the “200 words each” I’d been promised, one was almost 3000 words long, the other just under 1000. Quite a bit longer than 400 words, then.
Why do people do this, I wonder?
Of course, it could be a genuine mistake. These clients may, for all I know, be looking at the pages of tightky-packed text, and thinking, “Yup, that looks like about 200 words to me”. Maybe she said “two hundred words” when she really meant “two thousand”. Whatever the reason, though, time and time again I find that the clients who call me to ask for a copyediting or proofreading quote will drastically under-estimate their word count, and I sometimes can’t help but wonder whether they think I’m stupid. Maybe they think that by telling me the job is “just a couple of paragraphs” I’ll just blindly believe them, quote them a price and then not feel able to change it when I finally recieve the (much longer) text.
Maybe they think I won’t notice, and will charge them for the 200 words I’ve quoted for, regardless of the fact that it took me hours to do the work. Who knows. What I do know is that the quote today’s caller will be receiving will reflect the length the documents really are – not the length she told me they were.
The best example of this “creative downsizing” , incidentally, came a few months ago, when a would-be client contacted me to ask me to proofread his book. “It’s only ten thousands words long” he told me. Assuming that this was an e-book, or perhaps a children’s story, I asked him to send it over. The actual length of the manuscript? Three hundred thousand words. His excuse? “I must have mis-counted.” Yes, and you must have taken me for a fool if you thought I’d fall for that one…
