Maid in Wimbledon

The night before last my hotel bed did not have a plastic sheet on it.

Last night it did.

One of two things has happened. Either I am a bedwetter and don't even realise it, and the hotel is going for damage limitation, or else the maid service is trying to mess with my mind.

Hmmm.

Brush off

I am still in Wimbledon, which, I'm sure you'll be glad to hear, is still Womble-free. Laura Nunn, de-Wombling Wimbledon since 2008.

I have taken the opportunity of being away from home (yet close enough to return if disaster should strike) to have my flat redecorated. I have carefully chosen my clever shades of:

• Brilliant white
• Natural hessian

To the uninitiated, this actually means white, and kinda beige. One day I will open up the Laura Paint Shop which will not sell wanky colours of "apple white", "treacle tart", "hint of barley", or "barely ice". Fuck off. It'll sell red paint, blue paint, green paint, white paint and maybe that nice sunny yellow colour I have in my living room. Natural hessian, begone! Actually, I don't really want to own a paint shop. I retract that goal. It would be rubbish. I only have two tins of paint in my entire flat, stored at the back of my hall cupboard, and I still manage to drop them on my toe at least once a year. Putting me in daily contact with tins of paint would be like finding someone who is allergic to fruit, and beating them with a stick of rhubarb. That is exactly what it would be like. Don't question my similes!

Anyway, I am multitasking; I am horribly allergic to the smell of gloss paint, to the extent it can give me migraines for a week or more, so I am being very clever indeed in having the decorator round whilst I'm not at home. Unless he does the glossing last. In which case I'm buggered.

So I shall return home, hopefully to a brilliant white kitchen and a natural hessian bedroom. Or, if my decorator is dyslexic, a natural hessian kitchen and a brilliant white bedroom. Or if I'm really unlucky, just a pale beige shade all over.

It all seems to be going swimmingly so far, but you know me, never trouble-free for long. I will keep you posted. Right. I've got a hotel room to flood.

Lies

Underground, overground, Wombling free.
The Wombles of Wimbledon
Common are we.

Not that fucking common. I've been in Wimbledon two days now and haven't managed to see even one of the furry little bastards.

Driving me crazy

Today I finally met someone with a worse sense of direction than me. On one hand, this was excellent as it proved that there is at least one person in the world who has more trouble finding places than I do. On the other hand, it wasn't so great... as the person in question was my taxi driver.

I needed to be in Colliers Wood, South Wimbledon for 9 a.m. There was no tube from Bethnal Green. A cab was the obvious option, and duly turned up, bang on 8 a.m.

I marvelled at the lack of traffic as we arrived at Embankment by about 8.15. Westminster was resplendent in the sunlight. Through Wimbledon we went... and then things went a bit pear shaped.

Suddenly we appeared to be in a residential estate. And then on a main road, heading to Merton. The driver pulled over at traffic lights to check his map. He didn't seem to be very good at reading his map. He stopped at the next traffic lights to check his map again. Then he pulled over at a petrol station to ask for directions. I asked him to stop the meter. He said he'd sort it out when we got there.

I said I needed to be at Colliers Wood in ten minutes. This just made him drive more recklessly... in the wrong direction.

He pulled over again and asked a French girl where Colliers Wood was. She told him, and then asked for a lift. She got in the cab too. A few hundred metres down the road, she asked to get out. He asked her again where the tube station was. She pointed vaguely, said it was straight on and then right. The cab driver then said to me, "I couldn't understand a word she said. Where shall I go?"

I suggested following the (very big) sign to Colliers Wood.

We made it, eventually, after about an extra £20 on the meter. He apologised a lot, said he was embarrased and he'd deduct £10 from the bill (as the cab was on account). Said he hadn't been in the area for a long time.

I rather suspect he never found his way home. If anyone sees a London cabbie driving round in circles and crying, whilst randomly picking up French girls, could you please point him in the direction of Central London? Ta.

Mating season

Yesterday my cab driver called me "mate". A lot.

"All right, mate. Liverpool Street, mate?"

It was strange. It felt wrong. Darling. Babe. Sweetheart. Love. I am used to these from our cheeky London cabbies. But "mate" sounded a bit... odd.

Which is strange in itself, that I find it odd. I happily call my male friends "mate". My female friends and I also "mate" each other. So to speak. Stop picturing it.

But there was something odd about a total stranger calling a woman "mate". And I can't think of any of my male friends who use the term towards women - friends or not - either.

And then I started thinking about the word and its etymology. I have an English degree, so I am allowed to use words like "etymology". Even if it does make me sound a bit poncey. According to Wikipedia (which of course is never wrong), "Mate is a colloquialism with sketchy origins, although it is theorised that it started with use by dock workers in the Victorian era. It might also be derived from the Dutch word 'maat' which means the same as mate in English."

So it could be to do with ships mates. Possibly. I'll be honest with you; I kind of hoped I'd find more comedy in this one. But it's been educational if anything. Do you think I could apply for some sort of grant?

A regret

Perhaps I should have stated on my feedback form at the hotel that the jacuzzi didn't work.

Or do you think that might have been pushing my luck?

Plumb job

"Hello, Reception?" I called downstairs. Reception promptly sent someone to sort out my internet connection.

"Hello, Reception?" A couple of hours later, I called Reception to bring me a portable heater as my room was cold.

Barely an hour later, the toilet in my bathroom wouldn't stop filling. I really didn't want to call them again and be the pain in the arse whose breakfast they'd spit in tomorrow. I did the next best thing and called Mr Nunn.

"Dad," said I, for when we're on informal terms, I rarely call him Mr Nunn. "Do you know how to stop a toilet when the cistern won't stop filling?"

"Indeed I do," said Mr Nunn, who whilst an English graduate, knows lots of useful things about plumbing and putting up TVs and what rawl plugs are for. "Lift the cistern lid."

I did.

"Can you see the floaty thing? That's the ballcock. Lift it up."

I did. The noise magically stopped.

"That's genius!" I said. But as soon as I let go, the noise started again. I relayed this information to Mr Nunn.

"Right, well you'll need to bend the metal pole that holds it up a bit so it doesn't touch the water."

"But it's made of plastic, Dad."

"Bend it anyway."

I did. It snapped. A jet of water hit the far side of my bathroom.

"Fuck," I said. "I'm going to have to call you back."

I put the lid on the cistern and called Reception. There was no answer. A steady stream of water made its way towards the bath in one direction, and towards the bedroom in the other. I called Reception again. Someone was despatched to my room.

"Jesus Christ," he said. "I've never seen anything this bad!" He fixed the leak very swiftly and went back downstairs to get a new key for me to move room.

He had left the room for about fifteen seconds when the noise started again. It was worse. The jet of water was now spraying out in three directions. The entire bathroom was three inches deep in water and it was now halfway across the bedroom, to the extent that the carpet squelched. I called Reception again and the man ran all the way down the corridor with some elastic bands which appeared to solve things... at least in the interim.

And that, dear reader, is how Mr Nunn managed to flood an entire hotel room so - to quote the employee at this nameless hotel - "no-one will be in that room for quite a while". Mr Nunn is thinking of opening his own plumbing academy. Applications to the usual address.

In the meantime, my new room has a jacuzzi. Result.

Experienced Virgin

Try to keep your jealousy at bay for the time being, whilst I admit I'm doing some more glamorous work travel. At the moment, I'm in Birmingham. I know, I know. Some people have all the luck.

I travelled up this afternoon on a ridiculously full Virgin train. I overheard a lady talk about how the previous train had been cancelled, which might have accounted for how every single seat was taken. The seats themselves had clearly been designed by someone paid to squeeze every inch of space out; there was barely one luggage rack per carriage and no storage space between the seats - which themselves were very small.

My colleague and I boarded the train late-ish, after having to wait for a hippy mother in the sandwich shop in front of us dithering over which sort of organic chocolate little Clementine should be allowed. By the time we boarded there were no seats left together, so I squeezed in next to a tall guy in the aisle seat. He was large, but not fat... but the seats were so cramped together, I could already see this wouldn't be a pleasant journey.

He slept. This was good. No conversation. (Though he was reading documentation in French, so it could have been a chance for me to practise. He wasn't reading whilst he was asleep. Stop being so pedantic.)

As he slept, his arm traversed onto the armrest. This was OK. This is neutral territory. And I am quite petite, so even though the seats were small, I didn't need to sprawl.

Then the arm crossed the armrest. Ploggers, let me tell you, at the full extent of his invasion, his elbow was a good four inches across into my ten-inch wide seat.

I can tell you now from bitter experience that heading to Birmingham with a man's pointy bit encroaching into your seat and jabbing into you is no way to put you in a good mood. Well, I suppose it depends who the man is. And which specific pointy bit we're talking about. But the Birmingham bit is rarely good.

He got off at Coventry. Nothing good happens at Coventry either.

Music musings

Let's talk about music. You first, because my taste sucks. No, really, it does. Is music important in my day-to-day life? Honestly? I'd have to say no. I don't own a radio (other than in the car). My iPod, purchased to listen to an audio course I was following, has lain dormant since its completion about two months ago. I put music TV on about twice a year if I'm doing housework. Doing housework is almost as rare for me as putting music TV on.

That's not to say I don't like music. Give me an empty house back at my parents', and I'll happily plonk away at the piano for an hour or so. I even have perfect pitch. Go me! But the last CD I bought was over a year ago, and I haven't listened to it more than once. I will make an exception for when someone makes me a compilation... this will get played in the car, and occasionally I will find something that I love. So, when that happens, do I go and buy the album? No. If anything, I go and buy the sheet music.

I took a year out between school and uni and did (ah, the heady days of youth) listen to Radio 1 back then, to and from work. Zoe Ball in the morning, Mark and Lard in the evening. I grew out of Radio 1 shortly before leaving for uni, switching to Radio 2 (to which my car radio is generally tuned even today).

But for that one year, songs from that year more than at any other time in my life, evoke such a strong sense of being 19, being free, and everything being new. Some of them are rightly (or wrongly) forgotten (Hepburn's I Quit, Alice Band's Nothing on but the Radio). Some are hailed as classics (The New Radicals' You Get What You Give, Blink 182's All the Small Things, Britney Spear's Baby One More Time).

But most have dawdled into a general late-nineties' consciousness. These days REM's At My Most Beautiful, Sixpence None The Richer's Kiss Me and Robbie Williams' Rock DJ for most people are just part of a year's tapestry. But I will always remember how I crashed the company car to U2's The Sweetest Thing and, through tears I erroneously tried to wipe away with the windscreen wipers, left my final day at work (nothing to do with the car crashing, honest) to Macy Gray's I Try. And however naff it might be, I cherish the summer memory of driving my Astra, the window down, the seatbelt too hot to touch, singing along, top volume to the Corrs.

I can see you laughing. I did tell you my taste sucked.

Analy-tickle

I think it's time to visit our latest Google Analytics, don't you? For newcomers to the Plog, I've got a Google tracker set up so I can see which keywords people use to arrive at the site. I review this every few months or so and it almost always makes me giggle. So, here we go.

I'll omit the boring ones - people who searched on "Laura Nunn" or "Laura's Plog" and so on... and give you the top ten of my favourites:

1. "Henry Giffin" "inside your phone" - someone who clearly had the same Edinburgh Festival experience as Nice Kate and I did.
2. Erica's Wanking Club - a firm favourite. Well done, Erica! Keep up the wanking!
3. Vibrate my hamster
4. Cockatiel behaviour. Well, I am an expert.
5. "Laura Nunn" breasts. I wish my brother would stop Googling me.
6. "Sparkler up her". The mind boggles as to a) why Google would think my site is the best place to come for that information or b) why you would want to try that.
7. Gypsy news in Coalville. Erica may be able to provide this update. Watch this space.
8. How to make a hobby horse. Don't bother. You can buy them from toy shops. It's quicker. And will probably look less shit.
9. Anyone spotted Tamsin Greig
10. Stalking Tamsin Greig

These last two together, several results apart, really make me chuckle. And no. I have neither spotted nor stalked Tamsin Greig. Yet. Also, honourable mentions to "professional women ticklish feet", "BT lying bastards", "how to make a hobby horse from cardboard" - clearly the budget version of the above search, and "turn your boyfriend into a horse".

If anyone knows how to do the last one, I've always quite fancied a pony.

With friends like these...

Last night I found a new website. It sells merchandise branded with "Let's just be friends". Particularly cruel is the G-string... what a great way to dump someone.

It's an obvious enough marketing and branding range, with a somewhat limited (one would hope) audience. Possibly aware of this, and in an attempt to broaden their offering the branding guys have made a mistake.

Picture the meeting:

Overpaid tosser 1: OK, we've sold three pairs of pants and two t-shirts to some people in Essex, but we really need to branch out. What other demographics can we target?

Overpaid tosser 2: Well, we've cunningly covered both male and female clothing... I'm not sure this range really has much mileage in the pet market. And marketing it for Mothers' Day is right out.

Overpaid tosser 1: Hang on, no, you're onto something here. Mothers... hmmm. Biggest market in clothing? Come on! It's children! Let's make a toddler's t-shirt with "Let's just be friends" on it! Genius. They'll grow out of it within months and we can sell the bastards another one.

So, if you want to ward off the local paedophile, I'm sure this t-shirt will work. Though it might hurt his feelings a bit. Either that, or he'll take the "being friends" part literally and turn up at your house to play with your kids. So to speak. Think I'm lying? http://www.cafepress.com/ljbf

Plane as day

I awoke at 5.14 and 43 seconds. This was approximately - hell - exactly 17 seconds before my alarm was due to sound. My alarm sounded. I dragged myself out of bed and into the shower and scowled at my shampoo.

On a very early morning it is absolutely imperative to scowl at your shampoo. Never forget this. Do not scowl at your conditioner though. What has your conditioner done to deserve that? I'll tell you. Nothing.

My taxi arrived at six. As I went outside, I thought to myself, "Oh fuck, I've grown cataracts in the night." Actually, dear reader, you will be surprised to learn that it wasn't cataracts, it was fog. Foggy, foggy fog fog fog.

Still, the check-in guy said the flight was running on time... though ten minutes later, the departures board displayed those two words guaranteed to strike dread into any traveller's heart: "Indefinite delay".

Yet, we boarded only fifteen minutes late, at 7.15, and I was optimistic of reaching Edinburgh only half an hour or so later than planned - still plenty of time for my meeting. We then sat on the runway. For three full hours. Four times they told us we were about to take off. And we never did. After three hours, they took us back to the terminal and told us to get off the plane.

(Quick aside here, as it's just made me remember something: when we were travelling to New York, we went with an American airline, who described "getting off the plane" as "the de-planing process". De-planing process? Really? Fuck off. Is getting back on the plane the re-planing process? Would organising the plane before the flight be the pre-planing planning process? What about getting on a plane for the first time? Just the plain planing process, perhaps. Tossers.)

I digress. Basically I wasted another two hours in the terminal before BA took the plunge and cancelled my flight and I decided that my meeting was too far over to be useful to anyone, queued another hour for a refund and headed back to the office.

I know I have already dedicated several Plogs to why the buggery bollocks planes can't take off or land in fog, but I still don't understand it. They fly in the dark. They fly in thick cloud above ground. Autopilot does all the work. How hard can it really be?

Still, I have an unexpected couple of evenings to myself, and I fully intend to take advantage of being entirely de-planed for the next few days.

Tell me why... I don't like Mondays

It's hard not to feel lugubrious on the Sunday evening before a return to work after a lovely three weeks of holiday. No matter how much you enjoy your job, few people will deny that not being at work is better than being at work. Indeed, I believe that's why they agree to exchange their money for your time. This week, for me, the usual Sunday night blues are multiplied by three, and compounded by the fact that I have to get a very early flight to Edinburgh tomorrow, meaning I'll be up at 5 a.m. Woe is me. I genuinely do have a very mardy face on this evening.

But really, it probably is time for me to go back to work. Despite there being a few chores I've not yet got round to (still need to get my bathroom taps sorted out, plus my Corsa might have a "serious steering fault " - sure it's not vital...), I've found that recently I've been burning time a little too effectively. Yes, I've done some useful work, but I've also spent literally hours playing Facebook Scrabble, watching repeats of Frasier on Sky, baking cakes (well, one cake, let's not talk it up) and a tiny task (the washing up, putting laundry away) has started stretching to the main purpose of any given day. It's probably time I had some structure again.

I've also found that being on leave means that I spend a lot of money. I'm not sure why this is. It might have something to do with the trip to New York, the shopping, the new LCD TV I've bought... But all of those things were bought because I was on holiday so had the time to do so. So perhaps it is time to confine myself to an office space where they only let me out for an hour to buy stuff.

Mind you, there's always duty free at the airport tomorrow.

Do it yourself

B&Q in Waltham Forest is like the branch that time forgot.

I was up early-ish this morning, and with the weather so glorious, I thought I'd take advantage of London's lie-in (the roads don't seem to get busy until about midday at weekends) to go and get some paint I needed at B&Q. So off Jessica*, the Corsa and I toddled to Leyton.

They have a splendid "Entrance" sign... with a bollard right in the middle of it. Luckily I am trained to spot such things, so drove round the corner and found my way into the carpark. I entered the store. There were no trolleys. I asked the security man where the trolleys were. He laughed and cryptically said, "You might find some outside. Sometimes they are £1. Sometimes they are free. If you are lucky, you might get a cheap one."

I went back outside and located a trolley. It was free.

I came back inside. The store was dingy and the aisles were too close together, but I located the paint, and after dithering for a little while about whether I needed special kitchen paint for the kitchen or if wipe-clean matt would do (my life is so exciting), I was ready to make my purchase.

During my dithering, a small crowd had gathered outside. After putting my paint back into my free trolley to take it to the car, I realised why. There was a man lying on the ground of the B&Q car park, laughing with blood pouring out of his head. Everyone was standing in a circle round him. One person was on the phone - I think - calling an ambulance. (Or perhaps recording him as an ultimate happy slap.) I would have offered to help, except the "victim" couldn't stand and seemed to find this very funny. He rolled around the floor a lot, giggling to himself. I rather suspect he may not have been entirely sober or drug free.

So by eleven this morning I had already had an adventure. It has generally been a productive week. I have completed an exam, baked a cake, learned (and forgotten) the various positions in rugby, read two novels, Plogged fairly regularly, finally won a game of online Scrabble and bought paint. I am wondering how I ever managed to fit a full-time job in. Sadly, I suspect I will be able to answer this on Monday, as my three lovely weeks of annual leave come to a close.

* For infrequent Ploggers, Jessica is not my life partner, but my satellite navigation system.

It's good to talk

Let's talk about Argos. The shop, not the place in Greece. I know very little about the place in Greece. Though I am sure it is lovely. If you have been there, why not drop me a line?

If you have been to Argos the shop, and bought your phone or computer there, chances are you can't drop me a line because it's probably fucked.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love the idea of Argos. I like the idea that everything you could possibly want to buy is all in one place. It's genius. And magical that they have so much stuff in a tiny little shop. I reckon they've probably got a very big shrink-wrapper to store all that stuff there, but that's a separate issue.

Everything I have ever bought from Argos is bollocksed. Here:

• Sofa bed which is impressively uncomfortable as a sofa and as a bed, and came with Part C missing.
• Kettle where the lid doesn't shut properly
• Vacuum that doesn't suck. Well, it did, just not literally.
• Toaster that doesn't pop up properly
• Food processor that takes 15 minutes to assemble - and then fails to grate the cheese
• The saga of the shower radio (don't ask)
• The digital cordless phone which would cut my parents off every ten minutes. No-one else, just my parents. Like a built-in feature.

It was this latest purchase that caused me to return said phone to the store. They didn't want to refund me because I'd had it more than a month, even though it was faulty. They offered me a replacement. I said that I'd like a refund. They refused. We had an argument. I won. They refunded me... but then I felt that I couldn't really come back to the till and order another phone. So I left.

And then I realised that I genuinely couldn't think of another place where I could buy a cordless landline from. Well, there was a bloke selling them on Bethnal Green High Street, but I wasn't sure that was a brilliant idea. Argos have seeped into my consciousness on such a fundamental level, I honestly couldn't imagine where else one might purchase a phone from. It's like when I lived in Bristol and needed a lightbulb, and discovered (back then) they didn't have a Wilkos. I had no idea where else one could buy lightbulbs. It was a confusing time.

Luckily, for the phone issue, Mrs Nunn suggested Currys, which is walking distance from here. Technically I'm still boycotting Currys from the Coalville CD player incident from 1999, but perhaps it is time to move on.

New York - Part 6

The final installment.

US TV is mostly commercials. Eight out of ten commercials are for take-away food - KFC, Dominos, Pizza Hut and so on. One out of ten commercials is for Weight Watchers or slimming food. The tenth advert is for medication to take when you've eaten too much and so have high blood pressure, depression or are so fat that your joints have packed up.

They have an awful lot of adverts. A half-hour programme in the UK typically has adverts before the show starts, one break during the middle, and adverts at the end. The US half-hour show will start, run for five minutes, have adverts, run for ten minutes, have more adverts, and then show the final section of the show (often with adverts just before the last scene) - before running straight into the next show (no adverts) to ensure you keep watching.

Our two least favourite commercials were:

The never-ending "reverse mortgage" advert with some really dodgy old bloke. It wasn't annoying in itself, only that it was a two-minute commercial and was played during every single commercial break of the film we were watching. Ironically I can't remember the product's name. In your face, advertisers.

Celebrex. Celebrex was a fascinating advert because it was very hard indeed to work out what this drug was supposed to cure (celebrities perhaps?). After a bit of Googling, it seems as though it's an anti-arthritis drug. Fine. But it was the advert itself that was a bit disturbing, notably the line, "You may be interested to know that Celebrex has never been taken off the market."

What the fuck? I would be a lot more interested to know if it had been taken off the market. What on earth are they doing with their drugs in the USA to make "not being proved lethal - yet" a selling point?

I'm not naive - I realise that most drugs have some sort of side effect. But take a look at this (I've bolded my favourite bits. Yes Americans. "Favourite" with a "u"):

This medicine can increase your risk of life-threatening heart or circulation problems, including heart attack or stroke. This risk will increase the longer you use Celebrex.

Seek emergency medical help if you have symptoms of heart or circulation problems, such as chest pain, weakness, shortness of breath, slurred speech, or problems with vision or balance.
This medicine can also increase your risk of serious effects on the stomach or intestines, including bleeding or perforation (forming of a hole). These conditions can be fatal and gastrointestinal effects can occur without warning at any time while you are taking Celebrex. Older adults may have an even greater risk of these serious gastrointestinal side effects.

Call your doctor at once if you have symptoms of bleeding in your stomach or intestines. This includes black, bloody, or tarry stools, or coughing up blood or vomit that looks like coffee grounds.Do not drink alcohol while taking Celebrex. Alcohol can increase the risk of stomach bleeding caused by Celebrex. Do not use any other over-the-counter cold, allergy, or pain medication without first asking your doctor or pharmacist.

***

So - an arthritis medication which causes more side effects in older people - presumably its target market. Arthritis is as far as I know, a chronic condition, so you're going to want to use it indefinitely. Which will again increase your risks. It may also make you vomit coffee grounds and cough up blood.

But you may be interested to hear that it's never been taken off the market. And is advertised on primetime TV. America. Love it.

New York - Part 5

So we were on the flight back from New York. Well, technically we were on the flight back from Detroit, having already flown from Newark, but I think you understand what I mean.

It was a night flight - I was intending to pass out and sleep, but agreed to watch the first few minutes of Die Hard 3 with TheBloke (TM) as he said it was worth watching. It was, but for all the wrong reasons. Right near the start of the film, Bruce Willis is forced to stand in Harlem wearing a sandwich board that says "I hate niggers". Obviously, this is not a bright thing to do, and hence the drama kicks off. Except it didn't.

For whatever reason, the nice people at Northwest Airlines had decided this was a bit strong for its audience. The movie had been altered by CGI, so that the sandwich board read "I hate everyone". Wonderfully generic. Little bit misanthropic, but probably not enought to properly ire anyone, you'd have thought. Not so. A well-meaning black gentleman approaches Bruce Willis and asks him why he is standing in Harlem wearing a sign that says, "I hate" (pause for badly-dubbed voice match artist to say) "everyone".

Before long a whole crowd of black people has gathered. "What do you mean, you hate (pause for bad dubbing) fellas?" asks one disgruntled man, before threatening him with violence for his non-specific hatred. These cheery people of Harlem just can't believe that anyone could detest the whole of humanity. And are prepared to stand up against this generalistic misanthropy.

Hilarious to watch, yes, but seriously who is really being protected here? We KNOW that using the word "nigger" is likely to cause offence. The film is very much illustrating that. It isn't condoning the use of the word or glamorising it in any way. So just what the airline thought they were doing, who knows?

It did make me giggle though. And reminded me of a flight that Erica and I once took to the Dominican Republic (I think) not long after September 11. There was some rubbish Rowan Atkinson film showing on the flight, and it had one "comedy" scene that involved Arab businessmen. Nothing to do with terrorism - if memory serves, the scene was set in a casino. The airline had gone to the trouble of fuzzing out the Arabs' faces, as if panic was going to set in amongst its passengers, seeing the non-blurred faces of people in turbans.

At the risk of sounding like someone's parents - it's political correctness gone mad! But it still makes me laugh, so fuck it, bring it on.

New York - Part 4

I am relaying all of these NYC anecdotes out of order. It makes me feel disorganised, discombobulated and a little bit naughty.

Our journey to NYC was... long. We'd got a special deal which was a total bargain, but did mean that we took a bus from Bethnal Green to Victoria, a train from Victoria to Gatwick, a plane from Gatwick to Detroit, waited four hours at Detroit, got another plane from Detroit to Newark and then had to get to our hotel in Queens (the other side of Manhattan from Newark). So it was about 17 hours in all, and TheBloke (TM) and I had taken it in turn to have migraines at different points during the journey.

An extra hour was added on by having to de-ice the plane at Detroit, and the runway was so long that at one point I thought the pilot was actually going to drive the plane there for the whole distance. And then what we expected to be a $45 taxi to Queens turned out to be nearer $100, so we finally arrived at our hotel at about midnight local time - but about 5 in the morning UK time. We were tired. Excited, but tired. And - I'll admit - perhaps I was slightly lacking in the subtlety and tact that I usually pride myself on.

(Pause for sarcastic comments. And on we go.)

So we arrive at this pretty cheap hotel somewhere in the suburbs and it's a Saturday night and the hotel has some sort of disco going on. But far more strikingly than that, right in the lobby, on the telephone was the most obvious prostitute I've ever seen in my life. You know when people go to fancy dress parties like a prostitute? Well, that's what she looked like. Almost too cliched to be real. The full works - about 45 years old, fishnet tights, a black dress that was far too short and low cut for her age, bleached blonde hair and nasty stilettos. I couldn't believe it. It was like an American film come true.

Please remember I was tired. Please remember I had been up for nearly 24 hours. And had been ill.

TheBloke (TM) insists I actually stopped, laughed and pointed, and would have taken her photo if he hadn't dragged me (laughing and pointing) to the check-in desk. I deny this accusation. I am fairly sure I (very subtly) just drew his attention to her. He said I did this by stopping dead in the lobby, with my suitcase, turning round and pointing, whilst saying, "Look at the hooker! Look!".

I deny this. Though perhaps tact doesn't run in my family. I used to live in Dalston, in Hackney. My flat was actually on a pretty nice estate, but there was a dodgy cut through that I didn't often use. It was full of drug-dealers, drug users and fairly desperate examples of humanity, so I tended to avoid it when I was on my own. However, my brother was staying with me one weekend, and as we were together and it was only early evening, I took us down the cut-through. Jack, displaying all of the Nunn family subtlety said in his loudest outdoor voice, "I'm glad I don't live in a ghetto like this..."

So perhaps I did laugh and point. It's hard to know. Subtlety doesn't come naturally to us Nunns.

New York - Part 3

So we were in New York, and eventually it got warm enough to venture out about half a block to the local diner, where we would defrost for breakfast, prior to struggling another five minutes to the subway. Subway is what they call their tube system over there. I am here to educate, not to judge.

Anyway, en route to the subway in Queens where we were staying, there was a psychic advertising his or her wares. Here. Have a look:

The (for once) very good point that TheBloke (TM) made was if this person was a genuine psychic then what the buggery bollocks would they need to read palms for? Fun? To pass the time? A little bit of much-needed human contact? We resolved to take a photo of the sign when it wasn't quite so cold... but wondered if the psychic would know this and move his or her sign indoors so we couldn't ridicule them on the Internet. Ha. Seems that they weren't quite as psychic as all that after all.

Also see their other sign:

I love this sign. For a grammar and spelling - let's face it - fanatic like myself, I totally adore all manner of rubbish signage. Look at the bottom line: "Adviseis on all matter if life". Genius.

I wanted to buy a red marker pen and add, "Also, proofreading".

TheBloke (TM) wouldn't let me, assuring me I could do it with Photoshop afterwards. But I couldn't be arsed.