Tea time

Mrs Nunn is coming to stay. Let me just repeat that, for the hard of reading. Mrs. Nunn. Is. Coming. To. Stay. A bit like "Santa Claus is coming to town", but with fewer chimneys and more cups of tea.

Mrs Nunn drinks tea constantly. I don't mean she drinks a lot of tea, I literally mean she drinks tea constantly. When she puts the kettle on she makes two cups, so she can drink one straight after the other. And when she's finished both cups of tea, she makes another two. Straight away. After pressuring everyone else to join in her tea habit. "Are you sure you won't have one? I'm making one anyway. Ah, go on." Mrs Doyle from Father Ted has nothing on Mrs Nunn. And she wees a lot. Probably because of all the tea she drinks.

I sometimes think that if Mrs Nunn won the lottery, the only way she could make her life better would be by having herself hooked up to an IV of tea whilst sitting on the toilet. I haven't told her that though. Mrs Nunn is a bit scary.

Mrs Nunn is coming to stay because my choir is doing a concert. I tried to tell her in tactful terms that it probably wasn't worth the train fare, but she insisted. I tried to explain that we were the only choir to sing with honesty, There's gotta be something better than this, but she was heedless.

So Mrs Nunn is coming to stay. Watch this space.

Pet worry

It is a good job I don't have children. I think I'd be a worrier. I know this mostly because of the way I am towards the kitten. So far I have tried to convince TheBloke (TM) to take Monty to the vet six times:

1. A nasty sounding rasping sound in his chest. (Purring, apparently)
2. A large, hard lump under his fur. (Ribs, apparently)
3. Bright red poo. (Post Office elastic band swallowed, apparently)
4. Making a clip-clop sound when he walks. (Cat litter stuck to foot, apparently)
5. Little pimply thing on his chest. (A nipple, apparently)
6. Having a bright red bump near his anus. (His penis, apparently)

Yes, it's apparent that perhaps a career as a vet would never have been my best option. But just think how much worse it would be if Monty was a kid. Think of all the NHS time I would waste!

Though admittedly I would hope most of these wouldn't apply to children. Except maybe the elastic band. All kids eat elastic, don't they?

Maybe I should steer clear of children for the near future. Just in case.

Breast in class

Let's face it, Ploggers, I've put on a bit of weight. Though before you all start telling me I should be on the Atkins plan and wolfing down the Slim Fast, let's get this into context. I've gone up from approximately 6 stones 13 to 7 and a half stones exactly. This means I'm still underweight, but not quite as bony as I used to be. All is good.

Mrs Nunn clearly noticed this on her latest visit. However, Mrs Nunn, unlike normal parents would not go with the tactful, "Oh, you look healthy", or the slightly-less-tactful, "You're looking bonny." Did she come right out and say, "Christ, you're a porker"?

No. Mrs Nunn has but one measure for weight. Tits.

So, Mr and Mrs Nunn were sitting at the dinner table, with little brother Jack and my grandmother. Mrs Nunn looks at me, looks away, looks at me again, and states, nice and loudly, "Your breasts have got bigger, Laura."

There is no shock around the dinner table. Because this is Mrs Nunn's standard measure of weight. Last time I went home she said, "Your breasts have got smaller, Laura."

I dread to think how she monitors Jack's BMI. I daren't ask.

"Mum," say I, "next time you want to say, 'aren't your breasts bigger?', how about you just say, 'have you put on weight?' It's just that you talk about my breasts a bit more than is natural."

"Humph," says Mrs Nunn. "It's not my fault you're flaunting your knockers. And they are bigger. So there."

Floored argument

So, yesterday I had to drive to Sheffield for work. Despite living not all that far away as a little kid, I've only been there three times. Once to be born (though I didn't have much say in this; I'd have prefered somewhere a bit more literary. Stratford-upon-Avon hospital perhaps), once to look round the university (and eliminate it from UCAS proceedings) and yesterday.

It's hilly, it's grey, it rained a lot. It reminded me a lot of the university town I actually did end up in... Sheffield city centre must have been redesigned recently because poor Jessica was unable to navigate successfully. I saw "poor Jessica". At the time she was, "You fucking useless sat nav. I'm so going to trade you in for a Tom-Tom if we pass a Curry's." She kept trying to take me up bus lanes and cycle paths, and though I did my best to avoid illegaility, I'm still not entirely convinced an avalanche of penalty notices won't snow through the letterbox in a few days' time.

Also, the M1 gods had decided I was having far too good a time of it now they've finally finished the Luton works, so decided to dig up the entire route between Loughborough and Sheffield. In short, Sheffield is shit. Hope you appreciated the alliteration and assonance.

Having said that, I do think I prefer working with Northerners. I'm not sure if it's my roots, but I love the accent and people do seem to have a drier, wittier sense of humour - they seem friendlier too. Perhaps I'm generalising.

Of course, no visit oop North is complete without a pitstop to see Mr and Mrs Nunn, who are, I'd like to say "increasingly eccentric" but that suggests there's been some augmentation in the madness, which to be fair has been pretty consistent most of my life. Mrs Nunn would like wooden floors. Mr Nunn is resisting. You haven't seen low-level conflict like this since the Cold War. Mrs Nunn sneaks in B&Q brochures. Mr Nunn makes loud comments about how all the TV wires would be visible if there's no carpet to hide them under.

I'm surprised this hasn't made front page of the Loughborough Echo as this is quite literally the most exciting thing that's happened in Loughborough since the furore around whether or not the bus stop was going to move a few feet to the right.

Still, at least it's not Sheffield. Or Coalville.

Fry up

So, you're hosting a dinner party, and you can invite any six guests you want. Anyone at all. But they have to be living. The reason for this rule is mostly health and safety (corpses in the kitchen is a definite no-no), but also dead people are less entertaining, generally. So, they have to be living. But that is the only rule.

So - my list:

Stephen Fry
Josie Lawrence (who will become my best friend one day - she just doesn't know it yet)
Emma Thompson (though I would sit her away from Stephen Fry so they don't just luvvie it up all night)
Boris Johnson - just to watch him interact with Mr Fry
Steven Moffat
Victoria Wood.

And, playing this game with Mr and Mrs Nunn yesterday, I learned something. The first rule of this game is you must have Stephen Fry at your fantasy dinner party. It's like a rule. I don't know anyone in the world who wouldn't have Stephen Fry. Why would you have anyone else?

I wonder if his Twitter account is just overloaded with invites to dinner parties.

Monty meets Terry

I give up. I just give up. Up I have given.

I have a very funny - nay - hilariously funny clip of Monty Cat (previously known as Shona, Tango, Phoebe and Mr Phoebe) meeting Terry the Tourette's Turtle. Every time Monty Cat goes near Terry, Terry swears at him. Monty jumps, then tries to hit Terry, and the whole thing starts again.

Six times I have tried to load the video onto Blogger and Facebook. And now I must admit defeat. So you will probably never see it. But it is very funny.

Here is a picture, which is not as good as a video. If I ever work out the technology, I might uplaod it. But I fear the moment has passed.

So Monty Cat is having his balls lopped off soon. Not for our own personal amusement (though obviously that does come into it to a certain extent). Mostly because we don't want him to irresponsibly father baby cats.

This does - admittedly - seem somewhat unlikely as Monty Cat never leaves the flat, and neither I nor TheBloke (TM) consider ourselves particularly fertile when it comes to cat impregnation. But it never hurts to be too careful.


The date we've chosen for the loppage of balls is 1 April. So we can say to Monty, "Guess what, Monty? You're having your bollocks chopped off today!" And he'll be all like, "No man, no way, that's definitely a bad April Fool's joke. You can't get me like that." That's how he speaks. He is a streetwise cat.

And then he'll have his balls chopped off, and we'll see who's laughing then.

Poor kitty. I wonder if they'll do a buy-one-get-one free with TheBloke (TM). I can but ask.


Update. Have loaded Monty's video to YouTube. Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mbeUhWs6-U

Nailed it

I had one of "those" meetings at work. You know the ones. For whatever reason, you find yourself on the back foot, defending your projects' merits, and trying to prove to a challenging bunch of stakeholders* that you are a competent, worthwhile individual.

I was doing really, really well. I was eloquent and articulate. I mentioned targets, project planning and process mapping in one sentence... until I broke off. Stream of consciousness unfortunately took over:

"Ooh look, I forgot to paint just one of my nails last night. Look at that! I can't even count to ten. How stupid am I?"

Do not ask me for career advice .

* Or whatever description you may choose to give them.

Twit

I am slowly getting there with Twitter. Stephen Fry is my friend, though I haven't yet worked out why he's following my brother and not me. It makes me a bit sad because I'm much better at spelling than my brother, and I like to think Stephen Fry would approve of that.

Anyway, I only have five people following me. That also makes me a bit sad (though obviously grateful to those who've befriended me).

So if you have a Twitter account and would like to make me as happy as half a Creme Egg would, you can find me at http://twitter.com/laurasplog

I might even follow you back, so you get to pretend you're more popular too.

Aren't we shallow?

Frank comedy

Set the scene, May-ish, 2006. I'd been performing stand-up comedy for the best part of a year. Whilst I was beginning to get the (very) occasional (poorly) paid gig, I still considered myself a newcomer, and could mostly be found at open-mic nights. For the uninitiated, or uninterested, open-mic is a night, at which new acts are allowed to perform, unpaid. The audience rarely has to pay to see them. The moniker "open mic" is a bit misleading, as it suggests anyone can clamber up on stage and have a go. Whereas these days, acts need to book themselves a spot on the better open-mic nights up to six months in advance.

May 2006 I was lucky; I was regularly working in Edinburgh, and was flying up every couple of weeks at RBS' expense. This seemed a brilliant opportunity to book myself an open-mic spot at The Stand, a famous comedy club in the city. Also, my Scottish colleagues could come and see me perform for the first time. It turned into something of a team night out. Now, this Plog isn't about the gig itself (which actually went really, really well - probably one of my best gigs ever), but about what happened before the gig.

Anyone who thinks stand-up comedy is in any way glamorous is wrong. As an open-mic comic, it's very rare even to be offered a free drink, let alone anything else. Some promoters will only give you work if you are able (unpaid) to drive other (better) comics to the gig!

So The Stand was a delight... on arrival I was shown into a Green Room, with a water machine on tap (geddit?) for comics. Three or four other Scottish comics sat around, chatting. They clearly all knew each other (much like I probably would if it'd been a London gig), and I knew no-one. Still, everyone was very friendly to me.

There are two standard questions you ask other open-mic comics. 1. What is your name? 2. How long have you been gigging?

The answer to question 1 is always forgotten almost immediately and is really to pave the way for question 2. Question 2 is where you figure out how good the other comedian is. Less than six months, they'll be shit. More than three years, they'll be shit. The idea being that if they haven't got themselves off the open-mic circuit onto the paid gigs in three years, chances are they never will. Hence if anyone ever replies, "Four years," they tend to preface it with, "Well, I've started and stopped a lot, and I was in a coma for a year..."

The guy sitting to my right looked friendly. "Hi," I said.

"Hi," he replied.

"I'm Laura," I said.

"I'm Frank," he said.

"So, Frank," I continued, "how long have you been doing stand-up?"

"About ten years," said Frank.

Ten years? TEN YEARS? This guy was clearly beyond shit. I couldn't even believe he'd admitted to it. An entire decade on the open-mic circuit? What a loser!

"Well," I said, admittedly a bit patronisingly, "the main thing is that you keep enjoying it."

Frank went on first, and actually, wasn't that bad. I suppose he'd had a lot of practice, but maybe the crowd was just up for it that night.

"Good gig," I said, when he came off stage. "You definitely ought to keep it up - it's so nice to have a hobby you enjoy."

He smiled, gratefully.

A couple of other comics in the green room said something about the night being like a Who's Who of Scottish comedy. Still, I didn't recognise anyone, so let it wash over me. Fast forward about a week and a half. I'm watching a fairly new show called Mock the Week. One of the panellists looks vaguely familiar. Horror dawned on me like the slow realisation that the dark shadow on your curtains is in fact a giant spider. You can guess where this is going.

I had spent my pre-gig time giving Frankie Boyle career advice.

Turns out he was at the open-mic night testing out material for Edinburgh, when some condescending new comic basically told him to hang on in there.

Still, look where it got him. He's doing alright for himself these days. And he'd be nothing if it wasn't for me.

Much Addo about Beetles

It was a day out to Addo Elephant Park, about an hour away from Port Elizabeth. This was very, very exciting because I was led to believe that not only was I very likely to see elephants, but chances were I might see rhino, buck and - most excitingly of all - a dung beetle.

Arriving at the entrance, we were presented with this sign:

This was a good start. I saw dung beetles once before in Kenya, and it may have been the high point of the holiday. I don't know why I like them so much. I just do. Anyway, Addo was famed for its flightless dung beetle. Though I will admit that I have never - to my knowledge - seen a flying dung beetle. I wonder about them. If they fly with the ball of dung tucked under their wing. Perhaps I digress.

So, a convoy of two cars (TheBloke (TM), his mum and myself in one car, TheBloke (TM)'s sisters and nephew in the car behind), we set off into the depths of Addo. Yes, we saw elephants. We saw great big lovely tortoises. I even spotted a jackal. Being sick. And an ostrich urinating. Here are some photos.

But no dung beetle. Not a dung beetle was in sight. Kudu, plenty. Bok, of course. Zebra, millions of the gits. No dung beetles.

Until finally, finally, just as we were about to give up hope, a dung beetle slowly ambled in front of the car. We stopped, took photos, and drove carefully round the dung beetle.

TheBloke(TM)'s sisters followed in the car behind. We waved at them to show them the dung beetle, this miracle of poo-nature. They waved back. We waved again, and pointed at the road.

They waved back again.

Then they drove - seemingly in slow motion - directly over the dung beetle. Squished. Dead. It was an ex-beetle.

(Luckily we did see about 300 more once we left the park, so I don't think they were an endangered species after all. But still. One down.)

The dung beetle's task seems pretty thankless - rolling a big ball of elephant poo with dung beetle eggs in to safety. The poo is about three times the size of the dung beetle's body. And there's a large chance of getting run over or eaten. Basically it's - wait for it - a shit job. (I'm so funny.)

Still, I have days in the office where I wonder which of us has the raw deal.

At least the dung beetle never gets asked to "socialise" documents.

My first time

It has been a weekend of firsts. Yesterday saw my first kebab. And my first lesbian experience. And today saw my first tikka masala.

So in order:

1. Kebab. This was promised to me after a few vodka and cokes by TheBloke (TM) who was genuinely shocked I'd never had a kebab. I had the kebab. It smelled like death and tasted worse. Apparently I wasn't drunk enough.

2. Katy Who Smells of Wee is leaving the country for a little while. Sadly she's only off to Europe, so her smell of putrid ammonia will doubtless drift across the Channel often enough to make me dry heave. Anyway, we went to her leaving do. She got very, very drunk and - for some unknown reason - kept running at me from the other side of the room and squeezing my breasts. It would have been rude not to reciprocate. TheBloke (TM) says it was probably his best night ever.

3. Tikka masala made my face hurt but I finished it all because I'm a big, brave girl. Well, I threw some of it down my t-shirt, but hey ho.

I have photos of all three of the above firsts. I'll attach the one I think will be of most interest to all.

Home sweet homeless

Let's get it over with, folks. I live in Bethnal Green. And yes, I live in an ex-council flat. Yes, it's a bit rough, but thankfully more in a "blooming neighbour keeps smoking cigarettes outside my flat door" than "blooming stabbed teenagers keep bleeding over my welcome mat" way.

Today, for example, the council is removing asbestos (which I didn't know we had) from the ceilings in the communal areas. I imagine this may be a problem when my one-legged, sweary downstairs neighbour sets his flat on fire for the third time this year.

But, you know, the security is pretty good. We have an entry phone and a secure entrance, meaning you need a special key fob to get in and out of the property unless someone who lives there buzzes you in.

Last night I went out for dinner with some ex-colleagues in a very nice but slightly Hooray-Henry restaurant near Bank. I got home just before 9.30 and let myself through the secure entrance. I could smell alcohol very strongly, but Friday is recycling day (see, the area IS middle class!), so I assumed a neighbour had been a bit over-enthusiastic with their empties. Then I tripped over a tramp.

Let me say that again for you. I. Tripped. Over. A. Tramp.

Lying at the bottom of the stairs, snoring vociferously, was a tramp. He had two empty cans of Fosters next to him, and three more in plastic rings next to him. He didn't seem to gain any type of consciousness as I bumped into him, so I stepped over him gingerly. I was briefly worried he might look up my skirt, but this didn't seem to be high on his priority list. At a guess, his priorities were a) sleeping and b) drinking a bit more. It turned out later that priority c) was smoking his head off, as there were
at least ten cigarette butts in the hall when I left for work this morning.

I let myself into my flat. "There is a tramp asleep at the bottom of the stairs," I said to TheBloke (TM). "Do you think I should call the police?"

"A tramp?" asked TheBloke (TM).

"Yes," I said. Because I am nothing if not truthful. "A tramp is asleep. At the bottom of our stairs."

"Why would you call the police?" asked TheBloke (TM).

"I don't know," I said. "Perhaps they have some special unit for tramp disposal or redeployment."

"Someone rang the entryphone earlier," said TheBloke (TM). "But when I asked who was there, no-one answered so I didn't buzz them in."

"Well, someone did," I ascertained. "Because this block of flats now has its very own tramp."

I considered calling the local police, but it was a pretty cold night, and there probably isn't a Tramp Redeployment Centre in Bethnal Green, so chances are he'd have just been turfed out onto the street. And he wasn't really doing any harm. He didn't even look up my skirt whilst I was going up the stairs. (Though I was annoyed about the smoking. And a big dirty tramp patch at the bottom of the stairs this morning.)

I got up in the night to do a wee. (I hope you appreciate the inclusion of detail) I could smell cigarette smoke wafting up the stairs. I checked briefly the hall wasn't on fire (it wouldn't be the first time, and I love any excuse to call the fire brigade) and then went back to bed. I didn't fancy tramp confrontation dressed only in my pyjamas at 4 a.m.

Thinking about it, perhaps the area is a bit less middle-class than I'd originally thought. Hmm. Still, do you have your own tramp? No? Then I have more tramps than you and am therefore winning.

Curry favour

"So, what are you going to give up for Lent?" my friend Sara asked me.

This is an important point... mostly because it reminded me that through the excitement of baby elephants and big tortoises, I'd missed Pancake Day, most holy of all religious festivals, where we celebrate the baby Jesus' fondness for lemon juice.

Last year I gave up not drinking for Lent... and I'd mooted the idea of giving up atheism for this Lent, choosing a different religion each week to be credulous about. I was a bit concerned though in case I got stoned to death on choosing to exit certain religions.

So... it's hard to decide what to give up. I don't really have any addictions or habits, other than Cadbury's Creme Eggs, and fuck me if I'm giving those up. I did like the idea of giving up not doing something again... like giving up not smoking or not pulling the wings off spiders. But I didn't really want to.

So I've decided to give up not eating curry. I don't like curry. I've tried lots of times. I don't like it. But for Lent, curry shall be my middle name. Laura Curry Nunn. Has a ring to it. Perhaps a sore ring by the end of Easter. I shall keep you posted.

Lazy Plog

I'm back! And very, very tired.

So I will Plog. And I will Plog about about many exciting things. If I ever remember them. Because at the moment my head feels like it's made of fog.

So in the meantime, have some pretty photos. There are more on my Facebook page if you're a real life friend. If not, why not add me. Then I can have more friends than my brother, which is the most important thing.

I have typed up two Plogs I wrote whilst away, so I haven't been totally idle. See below.