On Friday night, Terry’s car left us forever. It was a sad time for us me. I’ve said before that I get ridiculously attached to things, especially cars, so I may have gotten just a little bit misty-eyed as I walked past it that night and thought, “This is the last time I will ever lay eyes on you, oh good and faithful servant! Well, ‘good and faithful’ except for that time you dumped us on the motorway at 11pm in the rain, and then refused to ever work again, obviously.”
As it turned out, I was wrong about the whole “last time ever” thing, because when I glanced out of the window an hour or so later, the men who’d bought it were still out there trying unsuccessfully to push it onto the back of a pickup truck. In the end Terry had to go outside and spend 30 minutes helping them push, so that made the whole thing a little less sentimental, to be honest, but hey ho. So, the car is gone, but not forgotten. It was the car that saw us through the first seven long years of our life together in this house (because, yes, it was THAT OLD.) It was the car we had when we got married. It was the car that took us on dozens of happy days out, and it was the car that drove Terry to hundreds of dialysis sessions and hospital appointments. (Well, I mean, Terry drove it, and sometimes I did. It didn’t drive itself: if it could’ve done that, there’s no way we’d have sold it.) It was the car that got pulled over by the police three times in as many weeks, because they were convinced we’d stolen it. It was the car Rubin once had really explosive diarrhea in on the way back from…oh no, wait: that was MY car, wasn’t it? Gah.
What I’m trying to say is: we will miss it. Or I will, anyway. It was a good car – when it wasn’t breaking down on the motorway, obviously. Its replacement, meanwhile, will hopefully be joining us at some point this week. I’ve decided that this time I WILL NOT GET ATTACHED. This will not be like that time when I was a child and I refused to speak to my parents for a week because they’d sold a car I’d viewed as an integral part of our family. Oh hell, no. It is JUST A CAR. Just. A. Car. I will be friendly but detached. Yes. Just you watch me.
 Goodbye, old friend “They don’t make cars like they used to
I wish we still had it today
The love we first tasted
The good life we’re still livin’
We owe it to that old ’57 Chevrolet”
~ Billy Jo Spears, ’57 Chevrolet
P.S – I got me a shiny new Google Friends Connect thingy, (which is the same as the Blogger followers widget, and is integrated with it), which you can see in the sidebar, so if you want to follow, please do, and I will follow you back!
Tagged car wars
Yes, folks, it’s yet another edition of Friday (Stolen) Photo! Which can only mean one thing: another poor fool has stolen a photo of my face and is using it to sell things on eBay! Or at least, I think it’s eBay. I have no idea what “gittigidiyor.com” might mean, so I’m going to have to assume it means “Site where people habitually steal photos of Magic Amber, and use them to sell products including – but not limited to – false eyelashes and lip plumping gloss.”
Or, in this case, “Not-Particularly-Plumping-Gloss”:
Yeah, those are my lips. Hai, lips! Do you see how the “before” and “after” photos are ALMOST EXACTLY THE SAME here, readers? That’s because… they are. As I noted in my review of this product, “Sexy Motherpucker” made no discernable difference to my lips at all. STOLEN PHOTO FAIL.
This time, rather than politely ask the seller to remove the photo, I simply asked which address I should send my invoice to for use of the copyrighted images. I get more vindictive with every body part of mine that appears on eBay. The next person to use my face without permission wakes up to a horse’s head in their bed, I swear to God.*
Oh, I’m also now a member of Turkish eBay. Yes.
And here was I thinking the Friday (Stolen) Photo would be a one-off! Oh, if only!
[Thanks to Lucy for letting me know about this one!]
* That was a joke, by the way. I mostly just think, “Wow, AGAIN?” when I see these, not, “OK, horse’s head.” Mostly.
Tagged ebay, friday photo, impostor amber, people who steal my photos
It’s been a long, long time since I last wrote about Nigel, the International Man of Mystery Next Door, so for the benefit of any new readers, a little bit of background…
Nigel is – or was – our neighbour. Our houses are semi-detached, so we share – or shared – a wall with him. Nigel bought his house about six months after we bought ours, and within about an hour of moving in, he was out there, mowing and weeding and pruning the already immaculate garden. Seriously, he couldn’t even have had time to unpack. “Wow,” we thought, “Dude’s going to totally put us to shame with all this obsessive gardening!”
But we were wrong about that. Because, just a few short months later, Nigel left. And never returned.
OK, that’s not totally true. Nigel DID return to the house next door, but only for minutes at a time, and almost always under cover of darkness. According to this very blog (Which will probably one day become important evidence about… something), the last known sighting of the International Man of Mystery was on February 23rd, 2007. ALMOST THREE YEARS AGO! On that night, he entered the house (“To leave food for the prisoners!” I speculated), banged about a bit (“Probably bricking up bodies in the wall!”) and then left, just a few minutes later. That was the first we’d seen of him in well over a year, and we haven’t seen him since. It works out pretty well for us, to be honest, because other than the fact that his garden now resembles a small jungle, at least we don’t have any neighbours. Well, other than the dead bodies I am periodically convinced he has hidden in there.
The house is still fully furnished (which means that someone is still paying council tax on it). It has not been repossessed, so either the mortgage is being paid, or Nigel owns it outright – which, of course, begs the question: why buy a house you have no intention of living in, renting out, or even maintaining properly? If it was bought as an investment, why go to the trouble of furnishing it, spending a few weeks obsessively tending the garden, and then not bother to even visit it for years, during which the property will surely be losing value due to lack of maintenance? Mail is still delivered for Nigel, although after we stopped accepting parcels addressed to him (circa 2006), it has tailed off significantly. No one ever visits the house for maintenance purposes – or not that we’ve seen, anyway. It’s not like we actually have lives, though, so I’m pretty sure we’d have noticed if someone had been in. It is a mystery.
Current theories:
1. Nigel works for MI5, and the house next door is a “safe house”. We will only find out about this when it is one day blown sky-high, probably with us inside.
2. Nigel is a an arch-villain, involved in some nefarious goings-on, which we will only find out about one day when the house floods and someone is forced to enter it, only to find DEAD BODIES BRICKED UP INSIDE THE WALLS. And then Terry and I will be on the news, as those dumb-ass neighbours who say, “No, we had no idea he was a serial killer! He always seemed like such a nice, quiet man!”
3. That’s pretty much all I got, to be honest. Your suggestions are welcomed, though…
Anyway, because we haven’t seen or heard from Nigel in such a long time, Terry and I had more or less forgotten about him.
UNTIL LAST WEEK.
Last week I was working in the office, and Terry was downstairs watching TV, or something, when I suddenly became aware of this… noise. I thought it was Rubin’s paws on the wood floors, at first. In fact, I’d keep looking round, expecting to see him there, and then realising that Rubin wasn’t even in the room with me: he was downstairs begging for food from Terry, and probably waiting for the right moment to pee on the washing machine.
Then I realised that the sounds were coming from….
* drum roll *
INSIDE THE WALLS.
Yes.
As creepy as this was, I… more or less forgot about it. I was listening to music through my headphones at the time, and I pretty much managed to convince myself that what I was hearing was either something in the background of the track I was listening to, or was maybe just the radiator cooling down, or heating up or something.
Yeah, I’d be a rubbish detective. This is probably why Scooby Doo never called me back that time.
Anyway. A few nights later, it happened again. This time both Terry and I heard it. We’d just gone to bed, when we started to hear a scratching/shuffling noise IN THE ROOM WITH US.
Well, this time I naturally freaked the hell out.
Terry didn’t. He got up, had a look round, and determined that the noise was coming from the attic, or inside the walls of the house.
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “I totally meant to tell you: someone is living in our attic! I heard them a few nights ago!”
The noises continued for a few minutes, and have been heard several times since, although always in the dead of night.
TERRY’S THEORIES:
1. Bats in the belfry, dude!
2. Rats. In the attic.
3. Or possibly squirrels. I really hope it’s squirrels, because, you know, they’re cuter than bats/rats.
(No offence to any bats or rats reading this, by the way.)
MY THEORIES:
1. A vampire
2. NIGEL, International Man of Mystery Next Door
Well, Terry made the trip into the attic last weekend, in a bid to try to find out what, exactly, we were dealing with. His verdict? “Something that chews things, particularly bags of clothes.” Uh-huh. This would SEEM to rule out the possibility of our unwelcome guest being Nigel, IMOMND himself (although you never really know, do you?), but given that we can’t find any access points on OUR property, it does make us wonder if the general state of neglect of the house next door means that it’s now teaming with vermin, dead bodies and the like, which have managed to find their way into OUR property via the attic space.
Either way, we’re calling the council to ask them to come and take a look. If that fails, I’m calling the Famous Five.
Tagged International Man of Mystery, the thing that lives in the attic
Well, as I mentioned last week, Terry and I had another fancy dress party to attend this weekend.
And, as I also mentioned, my planned costume was pretty half-assed. In fact, with the whole Christmas/holiday/Terry’s-car-breaking-down-on-the-motorway-and-having-to-be-replaced thing, I decided that a budget costume was in order, and that, on this occasion, I would basically try and take a “work with what you’ve got” approach.
Which was actually pretty ironic, considering that I decided to go as a personal heroine of mine….
[Note: image under the jump as Terry's outfit is a bit... well... a bit... risqué, let's say]
Continue reading →
Tagged bruno, confessions of a shopaholic, fancy dress
Quick swine flu update: Terry had the vaccination yesterday, and, much to my surprise, so did I. In fact, they gave me the vaccination for the regular flu at the same time, so I felt a bit like a walking pincushion. Contrary to what we were told last week, it turns out that a lot of people who’ve been offered the vaccine have turned it down, and it also seems that new supplies have arrived, so there now does seem to be enough go around, and thank goodness for that! Despite the dire warnings we’d read about the vaccine, we’re both absolutely fine – sore arms, but nothing more, so hopefully we will live!
Now, who wants a random act of stupidity? Oh. No one. Well, here’s one from last week, anyway:
So, picture it: I’m at the gym, plodding through a run on the treadmill, and thinking about the half-assed fancy dress “costume” I’m going to wear this weekend. (Because, yes, we’re going to another fancy dress party this weekend. Hee!) Suddenly, though, the music I’m listening to is rudely interrupted as something small and rectangular goes flying past my head and lands with a sickening crash on the floor behind the machine. I twist myself round, while still trying to keep running, and, whoops! It’s my iPhone!
I hit the “Emergency Stop” button on the treadmill, and do a kind of comedy lurch as I try to keep my balance while the machine shudders to a halt. Then I jump off, grab the phone, and, oh, miracle of miracles! It works!
So I get back onto the machine, re-set it and start running again, this time thanking my lucky stars that I DIDN’T just wreck my phone, and wondering how on EARTH I managed to throw it across the gym. The phone, you see, was sitting where it always sits: on the shelf at the front of the treadmill. It had never taken to the air before, and I was just pondering the theory that I must have somehow got my elbow caught in the headphone cable and kinda flicked it across the room, when…
My music cuts out suddenly and a small, rectangular object goes flying past my head.
WHOOPS. I. DID. IT. AGAIN.
I once again performed my comedy lurch, and once again rescued the phone, and I am both surprised and amazed – totally AMAZED – to report that, once again, it was still working. Not even a scratch! My reputation in the gym, however, was in tatters, because although it was fairly empty at the time, needless to say, everyone there was crowded around me like paparazzi. D’oh!
(Oh, and just in case anyone thinks I exaggerate about this strange behaviour of The Others, my friend Mhairi goes to the same gym, and has noticed exactly the same thing. So either the folks there really are weird, or both Mhairi and I exert a powerful magnetism that draws Others to us like Rubin to a radiator.)
I did get back on the treadmill again, but I’d only been running for five minutes (with my eyes firmly fixed on my phone and my elbows clamped to my sides) when Bambi Girl arrived. Bambi Girl is my shadow at the gym. No matter what time of day I go there, she’s there. I think she might actually live there or something. And no matter which machine I choose to use, she chooses the one right next to it, or just one away. I’ve experimented with using different machines, just to see if this theory of mine holds true, and yup: it doesn’t matter which one I use, she’ll be right there next to me, like me and my shadow. I call her “Bambi Girl” because after walking slowly for ten minutes or so, BG will suddenly ram the speed up on the treadmill, execute this weird kind of Bamb-like leap into the air, and then run for a few minutes before her twenty minute cooldown. It’s actually quite impressive.
Not as impressive as my iPhone-flicking maneouvre, though. I think The Others will have to go quite some way to beat THAT one…
Tagged bambi girl, swine flu, the others
Well. After all of the fun and games of the past few days, I’m relieved to report that the NHS have had a dramatic change of heart, and decided that they WILL be offering Terry the swine flu vaccination after all – but only because they had a cancellation. He’s getting the injection tomorrow, which is good news, although I have to say, some of the comments on yesterday’s post, in which people reported almost dying from the vaccination itself have freaked me out good, so it looks like we’re in for another couple of days of The Panic while we wait to see what happens.
I’m still angry, though. I’m angry that we had to fight so hard to get this, and I’m now wondering about all of the OTHER people with serious health conditions (cancer patients on chemo, other transplant/dialysis patients etc) in our area who probably WON’T be getting it – or at least not for a while. The only reason Terry is getting the vaccine is because we were prepared to make a fuss about it (And to answer some of the comments from yesterday, yes, my next step would have been to take it to the media, and invite them to clean up the mess they’ve apparently helped to create.). Many other people won’t do that, though, because they won’t know about the “pregnant women only” policy currently in effect, and that seems very unfair to me.
All of this aside, though, I’m glad Terry will get the vaccination, although terrified by some of the stories I’ve been hearing about possible horrendous side-effects. Needless to say, I’ll be glad when all this is over and I can go back to worrying about normal, non life-threatening issues.
Isn’t it about time for my holiday yet?
Tagged swine flu, The Panic
I’m upset.
A few weeks ago, I mentioned that Terry and I would both be eligible for the swine flu vaccination when it became available: Terry because he is in a high risk group for serious complications (read: death) if he caught this flu, and me because I live with him and could pass it on.
Well, last week our area finally got some supplies of the H1N1 vaccine. And they’re refusing to give it to either of us. Terry called his doctor’s surgery three times last week. Each time he was told that, why, of COURSE he couldn’t have the vaccine! Only pregnant women can get the vaccine, because obviously only pregnant women can die from flu, d’uh!
Now, before I go any further here, I should first of all say that I’m all for pregnant women being vaccinated. Of course I am. They do seem to be at higher risk than most of us, and so obviously they should be one of the priority groups. ONE of the priority groups. Because, actually, pregnant women aren’t the ONLY people at serious risk from swine flu – or any other flu, for that matter. Absolutely not. Terry is a transplant recipient. Every day he takes immunosuppressants which basically leave him with no immune system whatsoever. A bad dose of flu could be really serious for him, and that’s not just my paranoia speaking: it’s what we’ve been told by Terry’s doctors, and it’s why he gets the regular flu jab every year.
He’s not getting this one, though. Because he’s not pregnant. On Friday, his doctor called him and said that, contrary to the information the NHS have been churning out for months now about how they will be offering the vaccination to people with chronic health conditions, where we live they will ONLY vaccinate pregnant women . Our health centre, which serves a population of tens of thousands of people, you see, was only given 100 doses of the vaccine and they’ve decided to use it on pregnant women only. (For the moment, anyway. If and when they get any more supplies of the vaccine, they might think about giving it to people with serious underlying health conditions, but only if there are no pregnant people to give it to first.)
And the reason for this?
The media.
Yes, Terry’s doctor admitted to him that although Terry is in a high risk group and should be given the vaccine, media pressure has forced the NHS here to make the decision only to vaccinate pregnant women. This is despite the following information, from the NHS’s own website :
I’m on immunosuppressants. Am I more at risk of catching swine flu?
Yes. If you take immunosuppressants you have a greater risk of becoming infected with any virus, including swine flu, and will be less able to fight it off once you have it.
That’s what they say on their website. What they say in real life, however, is basically, “Good luck with that! Hope you survive the winter!” In other words: screw you.
I’m not bothered about getting the vaccine myself at this point. I would take it if it was offered, but I agree that there are people who need it more than I do. There aren’t many people who need it more than Terry does, though, and I just can’t understand why he should be refused it just because the media says so. Hell, lots of other people with chronic health problems have ALREADY been vaccinated in other parts of the county, but where we live we’ve had to wait until November to get any vaccine at all, and even then we only get enough for 100 people, all of whom must be pregnant to qualify. And that’s fair HOW?
So, I’m pretty disgusted – to put it mildly – that, by their own admission, the NHS is more interested in what the media says about them than in actually saving people’s lives. I’m outraged to find that the media now apparently gets to make important decisions on health care. But most of all, I’m just really, really frightened about what will happen if Terry gets this bug. This is the reality of life with a transplant for us. The fear never really goes away. You don’t just get the transplant and then go back to living a normal life. You have to spend the rest of your life worrying about it, and fighting endless battles to get the care you need. We don’t even have the option of going private and paying for the vaccine (which we would resent, but would do if we had to) because the private sector don’t have it, apparently. So we’re at the mercy of the NHS once again.
Terry has emailed his consultant at the hospital and asked what, if anything, can be done now. His consultant sounded almost as shocked as we were to be told that Terry “isn’t on the priority list” and confirmed that, yes, OF COURSE he should be offered this vaccine. He’s going to look into it and see what he can do to help. I’m just hoping the answer isn’t going to be “nothing”.
* Figuratively speaking
Tagged swine flu, Terry
In a change to our published schedule, rather than showing you a totally random photo every Friday some Fridays, I’m now going to use this slot to show you the new places my face has turned up on the Internet without my permission. It’ll be something to show the grandkids, I guess. Assuming Rubin has any.
I’m also going to refrain from rehashing the same old post about the CHEEK of people who use MY FACE for their own personal gain, and just allow you to imagine what I would have written if I wasn’t so lazy. Please refer to this post, this post and let’s not forget this post if you’re not sure.
This week’s Stolen Photo, then, sees me once again advertising false eyelashes on eBay:
There were actually three auctions featuring yours truly, but two of them used the same image, so I’m sure you don’t need the illustration. Oh, and when I contacted the seller she told me she’d removed the images, but it turns out she only removed one. The others are still there. Presumably she thought I wouldn’t bother to check.
Anyway, thanks to Ola for letting me know about this latest appearance. Remember, folks, there are fake Ambers all around you, so if you spot one, please let me know! Meanwhile, if anyone needs me, I’ll be spending my weekend watermarking all of my images. The fun just never starts, does it?
Tagged ebay, friday photo, impostor amber, OMG internet drama!, people who steal my photos
I’m just going to keep this short, but slightly hysterical:
WE LOST OUR PASSPORTS.
We turned the house upside down looking for them. We searched for an hour. I even called my parents to ask if, by any chance, we’d left the passports at their place when we got back from Florida this summer. (There is a reason why every time my mother sees my number on the caller display, she answers with “What’s wrong now?” rather than the customary ”hello”.)
Finally, just as I’d started to type the phrase “OMFG I lost my passport!” into Google…
Terry found them.
IN THE VERY FIRST PLACE WE’D LOOKED.
Isn’t that always the way of it? (Answer: “No, Amber, not really. Not unless you’re an idiot, obviously.”) And the first place we’d looked? Was a certain drawer in my filing cabinet which I tend to think of as “the passport drawer”. No, there are no prizes for guessing why I call it that.
The thing is, though, I SEARCHED the passport drawer. About ten times. In fact, so certain was I that if they weren’t there, they must be gone for good (I know I’ve managed to lose almost everything else I own this year, but I am actually pretty careful about the passports. No, really.), while Terry systematically ransacked the house, looking under rugs, behind mirrors and inside the dog’s ears, I just kept circling back to The Passport Drawer and going through it over and over again. Mostly while shrieking, “I can’t believe we’ve lost our PASSPORTS! Someone’s probably pretending to be me in Cuba or somewhere by now!”
Then I would search The Passport Drawer again. And again. I know I’m something of an unreliable searcher, too, so Terry ALSO searched TPD, at least three times that I can remember. The passports WERE NOT THERE. And then suddenly… they were.
I can only assume from all of this that at some point last night, our passports discovered how to make themselves magically invisible, and did it just to screw with us. It’s the only possible explanation. (Because it can’t POSSIBLY be that Terry and I are just STUPID. No.) If so, I can only hope they don’t ever decide to do it again, because I had to switch on my SAD light this week, and my sanity now depends on getting out of the county for a couple of weeks at least.
I think I’m going to give the passports to my parents for safe keeping. Also my green dresses. And… just everything, really. It’s the only way I can guarantee their safety.
(Oh, hey, that story wasn’t really short AT ALL, was it? Whoops.)
Tagged things I lost
You know how in the aftermath of Black Friday, I was all, “WAH! Advance posts deleted! Can’t go on holiday! Life over!”?
Mercifully, it turned out not to be true:
Those are the Maspalomas sand dunes in Gran Canaria. The two little people you can see? That’ll be me and Terry, in the two weeks right before Christmas, although we’ll hopefully be walking in the same direction as each other.
It’s not the holiday we’d been planning. Before the Week from Hell (probably known to the rest of you simply as “last week”) hit, we’d had all kinds of ambitious plans involving long-haul flights and multiple connections, and me magically turning into the kind of person who doesn’t hate flying with every atom of her being.
I know! What the hell were we thinking?
But then Heart Internet deleted all of the advance posts I’d written in preparation for this mythical holiday. And Terry’s car decided it had just taken its last ever trip – destination: the side of the motorway. Suddenly, all was lost. But not really! Because, dashing to the rescue came Erin and Fi and Sian and Gemma, and all of the other wonderful people who either sent me guest posts for The Fashion Police or otherwise helped keep me sane. Thanks to them, plus hours and hours of work on the part of Terry and I, we managed to get everything back on track. We have matchsticks propping open our eyes and my fingertips have been worn down to little stumps with all the typing, but we did it. And if anyone ever tries to tell you the Internet is a cold and heartless place, full of perverts and weirdos, I will tell you… well, actually, I’ll tell you you’re totally right about that, I mean SERIOUSLY, you should see my spam folder some days. But as well as those people, there are also some absolute GEMS, and I’m very, very lucky to know so many of them. Aww, group hug, you guys!
Ahem. Anyway…
The car is still screwed (special, mechanical term for you there) which means we’ve had to revise our expectations a little, and go for a short-haul, no frills kinda break, but at this point we’re just so grateful to be able to go anywhere AT ALL that we’re not complaining. We’ve actually been to Gran Canaria before, years ago, and enjoyed it, and as long as I don’t get the flu again, like I did on our last winter holiday, I’m sure we’ll have tons o’ fun.
Conclusion: I like this week much more than I liked last week. MUCH more.
Tagged gran canaria, heart internet, holidays
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