On this day ....

...in 1975.

The Cat who walked by herself was born. (When she has got off her bum and created a blog, that will turn into a link!) Interesting that handle. I wonder if she realizes how Freudian the nickname she has chosen for herself really is. We met at university, having for our sins, ended up in the same Hall of Residence and on the same course. And she really did walk by herself. Frankly, and I have said this to her face many times, she was the most openly hostile person I have ever met. Quite how we ever ended up friends I have no idea. It is a total miracle. I'd put her picture up here if I dared, I have some lovely ones of us at Barry Island looking like two really classy birds outside an amusement arcade. I am the one sulking at having my picture taken. If I did that though, she would probably buy a plane ticket and come to Tokyo just for the privilege of killing me. So I won't. Well not until I'm sure she's not looking anyway.

Anyway, I raise a glass in a silent toast to you, the Cat who no longer walks by herself. Thank you for being my friend, and for always telling me when my hair looks crap. HAPPY BIRTHDAY.

Escape artist extraordinaire...

At the risk of sounding like a cracked record, mary-the-hamster really is causing me a few problems. I suppose it serves me right for assuming she was smarter than she is. I had imagined a utopian existence where the two of us would sit happily on the sofa together watching The vicar of Dibley or something, where mary-the-hamster would occasionally nibble a peanut or piece of kiwi fruit from my finger tips... Unfortunately, I don't think she likes me very much. When I open the cage she immediately tries to make a suicidal leap to the floor and then starts running around like something possessed. She's already violated my wardrobe and tried to get under my futon, and then there was the time she picked up some grain of something that had got trapped under the bin and tried to eat it...
Perhaps she'll settle in soon...


In Memoriam

When I was about 8 years old I think, this new girl came to our school from Gloucester. We knew each other vaguely but were in different classes. The next year we found ourselves in the same class and at the same table. Before we knew it we were inseparable and have been friends ever since. As it happened, my Mother's family came from Gloucester too, so we had plenty to talk about when Granny P came to visit my friend, Cathy. I only had one Grandmother by that time, so it seemed logical to us that I would share. After all, really, how do you address your friend's Gran? Mrs Pearce seemed way too formal considering the amount of time I spent round their house and calling her by her first name was obviously out of the question. She was called Granny P, you understand to distinguish her from the other Grandmother who was Granny Bick. I didn't see Granny P that often but I absolutely adored her. She was so unlike anyone in my family; so gentle and always kind, I never heard her have an unpleasant thing to say about anyone and I never heard her lose her temper. I'm sure she had her faults just like the rest of us, but I never saw them, and I never heard anyone who could ever find fault with Granny either. She didn't treat me any differently than she would have another Granddaughter and one Summer she even had me to stay at her house in Gloucester with Cathy. I remember she let us stay up way later than I was allowed to at home, that was the year I discovered the marvellous TV programme called Casualty which was all the better for being on past my bedtime. She also made sure we forced some supper down each night... after dinner you understand! The most memorable thing about that holiday however, was me getting stuck in my shorts. Somehow the zip broke while I was trying to get out of them and Granny P had come upstairs to check on us and to my immense embarrassment, she insisted on cutting me out of the said shorts. Red-faced I went to bed only to find the next morning, that Granny had replaced the zip and folded up my shorts and left them at the end of my bed. Whenever I think of that incident, it brings tears to my eyes even now because it was such a kind, thoughtful thing to do, and to me, at 13 or 14 it seemed a true example of goodness. My family were well-known by the way, for a complete inability to get on with each other and I thought my Mum would probably have an absolute spack attack about the shorts. So it wasn't just that with one small zip, Granny had erased my embarrassment, she also saved me from my Mum...
I visited her a few times when I moved to Cheltenham but I will always regret not visiting enough. Granny P passed away last week at the age of 85 and even though in recent years I didn't see her nearly enough, I will still miss her. She was a true lady and an example to us all.

Rodent Trouble.

I have inherited a completely mad hamster. It isn't that much of a surprise I suppose. mary-the-hamster finally figured out that the food is on the upstairs landing, and that she has to use the fun ladder to get to it, even though I showed her where it was, apparently it didn't sink in yesterday. However, she hasn't worked out that once she's in her running ball, she has to keep running otherwise she falls over, that's quite comical. She seems to be refusing to make a nest and insists on sleeping in the spherical bit at the bottom of the fun ladder and she thinks the litter tray is full of delicious food. I have no idea how you are supposed to train a hamster to use its own version of the W.C - I assumed it would be obvious. It isn't. So she either tries to eat it or sleep in it. The only thing she doesn't do in it, is what she's supposed to do in it. Oh, and she does that all over the upstairs landing, so much for kitchen hygiene!

There isn't really much to report, the Pastor Search Committee is driving me nuts; unfortunately it's all extremely secret and confidential so until it's over, I can't report too much. Essentially though, we are going to have to start again. How utterly depressing.

New arrival.

We have this feature in our church service called the "sayonara blessing" for those who are leaving the congregation to come forward and say a bit about what they have been doing and what they intend to do, and have a prayer of blessing for their future. Now I have always seen this particular aspect of the service as absolutely ghastly. Basically because, what invariably happens is that whoever gets up there feels the inclination to gush on for about half an hour about how marvellous TUC is and how much they will miss us. Naturally by this point in the service, I am more interested in my forthcoming lunch and don't really care...

This morning, Winda from Indonesia was leaving and asked if anyone would like her hamster, Pastor Colin had already volunteered to take two- one each for his children, Erica and Calvin, who have decided that despite the fact that the hamsters are both male, they are actually brother and sister and both called Nemo... So Winda was left with a baby girl hamster which she "didn't want to have to throw away".... Lady are you kidding???! Maybe it was an English issue - at least I hope it was, she surely couldn't really have been considering that. Anyway, obviously I had no intention of adopting a hamster and when would I have gone to fetch it anyway, them woman was leaving on Tuesday. However, Winda is obviously a good deal smarter than me, and she had brought the unsuspecting hamster to church with her. I saw her and made the mistake of saying "oh I want it!" within earshot of my friend Mary, she of the uncommonly good sense- who then said "then take it!" and shoved me, and I do mean shoved, in the direction of Winda and her hamster. So now I have a new flatmate. This is mary-the-hamster. Needless to say that Mary does not approve of the name I have chosen. I wonder if you can baptize a hamster.... You know, just to make her name official....

Why does God hate me?

It's been a while, mostly because the chore of serving up a daily portion of my legendary acerbic wit became too much and I had nothing left to rant about. Check out jongudmund's addition to my rant about spammers. Much more amusing than mine, damn him...!

Several months ago, I sent one of my group emails about my travels in Ho Chi Minh, or Saigon or whatever it is that we are supposed to call it this week. The subject of said email was "The Roach incident" It detailed an encounter that I had had in a cafe with a rather large roach. Well, that has now been relegated to the ranks of "A slight inconvenience caused by a cockroach" because now I really have had a ROACH INCIDENT. I would just like to preface this by saying that in four and a half YEARS of living here, I have NEVER had a roach in my flat. EVER. I have also never thought of myself as phobic but two days ago, all that changed.

I got my patchwork quilt out again recently, having finished a few cross stitches- I had started a piece of blackwork but the stitch was quite complicated and I couldn't muster up the enthusiasm and then I remembered the patchwork so I got that out instead. Anyway, there I was sewing away and I happened to look up and out of the corner of my eye, right there on my floor I saw a massive roach. I didn't have any bug spray, and I didn't have any "roach hotels" so I asked myself what the hell I was going to about this roach. Now, I can hear everyone saying KILL IT...!! The problem is that to do that, you have to get close enough to crush the little scummers and I was not about to do that. You also have to clean up the mess, which I also couldn't bring myself to do.

So I came up with an elaborate scheme involving the roach and a carrier bag. Surprisingly, this scheme actually worked. Until I was that pathetic that I could not bring myself to pick up the bag with the roach inside it. Now, I've never broken out in a cold sweat before, but that's what happened as I was edging toward the carrier bag to pick it up and chuck the bag out of the window. And then the shuddering started.... I was quite surprised myself, I have to say, and I know what you are thinking but when you live alone and you want to go to sleep without the fear that some nasty little beast is going to crawl all over your face in the night, these things have to be dealt with. So as I go to get another carrier bag to put over the first one, the wretched thing escaped. Thankfully I saw it out of the corner of my eye again or this might have been a very different story involving me ending up in an asylum. It ran under a piece of furniture and I decided that I would have to wait for it to come out. I should add that it was about 12.30 or 1am at this point. I decided to watch another episode of Green Wing and wait. About 45 minutes later and it still hadn't come out; wondering what to do, I went and got the torch to find out where it was. And of course it was nowhere to be seen. After quite a long while of this I decided that the only thing to do would be to make quite sure it was sealed in and then buy a roach hotel in the morning. Unfortunately for me, the ROACH had other ideas and I was securing the closet doors it legged it into the kitchen. Which left me with a dilemma - leave my flat at 1.30am and sleep in the park with possibly more bugs, or get it out of my flat.

Despite the fact that it was really late, I decided to vacuum it and then chuck the vacuum onto the balcony so the roach could crawl back out and go away. Of course, not really being schooled in the ways of roaches, I hadn't bargained for the fact that it would bolt at the first sound of the vacuum, so that plan was out of the question. I finally remembered from an old joke -(How many roaches does it take to change a lightbulb? Can't tell, they scatter as soon as you turn it on.)- that the heinous things do not like the light. So I came up with another elaborate scheme involving the old curtain rail I still haven't thrown away, another carrier bag and my torch. The details are long and traumatizing, needless to say that they involve me, standing in the middle of my kitchen, dressed for bed, which is to say, not wearing very much. Holding the old, broken curtain rail which I use for banging on the ceiling when the upstairs neighbours are being noisy, in one hand and my torch in the other, herding the roach. Mostly it wasn't very co operative and at one point I really thought I was going to cry. At last, at about 2am, it went into the carrier bag and shaking like a leaf, praying out loud that it would not get out of the bag, I pushed the curtain rail through the handles of the bag and put a hole in the screen door trying to open it with the same pole. And finally after more trauma, the bag and the roach finally slid off the pole into the night. I felt slightly guilty about littering the car park but not that much.

After such a stressful couple of hours I was really wound up and couldn't bear the thought of turning the light out. Every time I close my eyes, I can see that roach with its antennae as long as my index fingers and even though I didn't have to touch it, I feel as though it is crawling on me.. I wonder how long it will take to forget...

Learn the hard way...

Well well well.... what to do I wonder... you tell someone you *think* is your friend something in confidence... you imagine he has the sense not to pass it on and then he does just that. It just goes to show that what I always thought was true, is in fact the case. Men are simply not to be trusted. They are worse gossips than us girls. I am trying really hard to be very holy about the episode but frankly I want REVENGE. I had decided not to go the appalling, obnoxious route on this blog and had told myself firmly that I would not put all the office shenanigans and arguments and annoyances on here precisely because one of my colleagues does precisely that and I find it so distasteful. HOWEVER, in this case I am going to make an exception. Spencer, you know what you said and to whom you said it. And you should know by now that she is the town-cryer's deputy, telling her not to tell me that you had told her was a surefire way to make sure that I did, indeed find out that you had told her. Know this, I am never telling you ANYTHING again. EVER. AND you are no longer my back-up bloke. SO there.

FOUND...!

Ok, now I get it and am having to eat absolutely TONS of humble pie. That's good, because according to the doctor, I am having trouble with my tendons because I am overweight and on the diet she suggested, humble pie is just about all I can eat.
LOST is compulsive, you just have to keep watching. Never mind that the premise is utterly ridiculous, the likelihood of that plane having crashed onto a convenient beach is almost nil; you simply have to know what is going to happen. Who is "The Island" going to take next? And what will be their violent death? Will the courageous doctor and his intrepid band of misfits get off "The island?" What new and frightening weird creature is going to spring out of the jungle? Is the baby ever going to arrive? Who is the mysterious bloke that kidnapped the pregnant girl and what nefarious deeds did he have in mind? Whose terrible, life destroying secret are we going to discover next? When is someone going to try and teach the Korean chap to speak English? More importantly, what is the mysterious "Hatch"? It really is completely puerile and ludicrous, but watch a single episode and you won't be able to help yourself. How completely annoying.

A further observation about the perpetrators of spam; why do they all send emails purporting to be from people with such STUPID names?! I mean, really Ebony Medina? Frederic Dickerson? Hunter Pitts? Maverik Barriovoni? Weston Coker? Morgan Vigil? Hiram Finn? Erma Shepard???!!! Please! Do they really think anyone is going to believe that someone with such an insane name sent them email for no reason? What *am* I missing here?! I just don't get it.

LOST.....?

I certainly am. Everyone in my office is obsessed by the aforementioned TV show. Wanting to know what all the fuss was about I asked Steven if I could borrow his DVD set, and he graciously agreed... Now, leaving aside the bizarre fact that my region locked DVD player actually plays the region 1 DVD when it is not supposed to as my "Region Killing" software trial period expired about 3 months ago - I have to say that the pilot episode was completely baffling. I have absolutely no idea what is going on! Well, other than the fact that a plane has somehow crashed on a strange island which could be inhabited by gargantuan aliens/monsters/demons from Hell, that is. So far the main characters seem to be a doctor - how convenient - and a random woman that he clearly fancies - obviously, what would be the point of her otherwise?! - oh and a B list rock star who from his accent is obviously supposed to be British but has apparently never heard the accent he is supposed to be producing....Now, add in the Korean husband and subdued wife duo, the so-pregnant-she's-about-to-burst-possible-Australian and the token obese guy and African American father and son combo, and you have the recipe for what is said to be the best thing on TV. Why? I haven't a clue. I am prepared to watch the next couple of episodes in the hope that like Star Trek:Enterprise, it improves with age, but I'm not holding my breath.

The spammers giveth and the SpamGuard taketh away....

Yes, but do they really?! I mean, honestly, the creation of a "bulk-box" really doesn't help at all, does it? After all, you still have to keep checking to make sure no one slipped through the cyber-cracks.... just in case that important iTunes Update managed to slide in there by mistake... it REALLY annoys me, I mean the fact that it's there at all infuriates me. No matter that if I don't look at it for a week they will automatically delete it- if I left it a week, I'd run out of space in my "bulk-box"! Not a day goes by when I don't get about 15 emails asking me if I'd like to please my woman... er.. no thanks...! Or if I'd like to enlarge a part of anatomy that I don't possess... equally one I could live without. For a while my "bulk-box" was besieged by photos of women in their underwear asking me if I wanted a Russian Bride... the latest interloper is the "extraordinary business opportunity" pitch which turns out to be a job in an oil rig in the arctic something... and don't let me forget the ridiculously cheap printer ink, or the rolexes at warehouse prices. I also particularly enjoy the desperate letters from widows in war-torn Africa informing me that I can inherit 15 million pounds if I email them all my personal details. Yeah RIGHT. Who ARE THESE PEOPLE!?!??!?!!? Is anyone actually think enough to fall for this rubbish? If not then what are these people getting out of spamming? I simply cannot understand it. But what REALLY incenses me, is the forwarded chain mails telling me that some little girl (who by the way, is now 65 and has been in robust health for her entire life) - is dying and that IBM or AOL or someone will donate 20 cents for every person who forwards this mail to a charity destined to save her life. NO. THEY. WON'T.

The Big Old Tokyo Cult of TUC

After a reasonably nice but vaguely expensive lunch of lamb (ok) and cous cous (less than inspiring) with Mary, somehow I found myself being taken back to church for the monthly Evening Praise Service (or EPS for those on the "inside"). Normally, you understand, I would NEVER actually stay around to go to a *contemporary* worship service, but Mary seemed quite keen and as she is a woman of uncommonly good sense, I thought I may as well try it. Well, we started off with the requisite 6 praise songs I had never heard before (oh, alright, I knew one of them!)- each sung 20 times until everyone was sick of them, conveniently displayed on the wall courtesy of PowerPoint so that no one had an excuse for not clapping. The "Worship Band" which consists of 8 singers a guitarist and a pianist led us through what seemed like an interminable agony of cheesy arm raising and closed-eye swaying. I have to say that most of the while, I was simply trying hard, not to grimace. And then the long awaited for "message"- this week to be delivered by our church sexton, or caretaker for those not familiar with made-up church jargon. Now up until this point, I had considered him to be fairly sensible and conventional, I was interested to hear a "message" from a Japanese member of the congregation too, since I often wonder how the Japanese really perceive Christianity. He started out well with an anecdote about how he wanted to help more people within the community etc etc, and then moved on to his secret recipe for happiness in life; namely the three Ps... Partner, Prosperity and Peace, well I imagined he would be talking about God as a partner and spiritual prosperity (couldn't we all do with some of that?) leading to peace. How wrong I was. It kind of turned into a sermon on how to attract a nice bloke at church. I am not going to actually rant here as I'm sure you can imagine what I have to say about that anyway... As if that weren't sinister enough, the "leader" of our illustrious third service then "invited" us all to get up from our seats, move around the church until we were all in a circle and then HOLD HANDS. Shades of "Bind us together" at St. Mary Mag happening here but thank the Lord we didn't have to actually sing at that point. He just prayed. For a long time. And then we were free to sit back down and enjoy the next round of never-ending praise songs. Now you understand that I am not opposed to praise and worship music per se, I just object to having to sing everything 6 times. Twice, preferably once, would be enough. It's all so stage-managed that it seems more than slightly fake, too. But even then, if it's done well, it's almost enjoyable. The real problem with the EPS is that it isn't done particularly well. The fact that the Worship Band almost outumber the congregation is pretty sad in itself but that there are seven female singers and one bloke is silly. It is completely unbalanced, why don't they have a rotation system? Also despite the fact that they only have to do it once a month, they are disorganized and under rehearsed. Yes, yes I know, it's not about rehearsal, it's about God etc etc but the fact is that if they ran the 11 and the 8.30 services like that, no one would go. What further bothered me about the EPS is that there was absolutely NO Scriptural input whatsoever. Which might be why it all seems like a jumbled mess, perhaps they need to be more focused on say, a theme. But above all that, what REALLY spooked me was the EPS cult-like chant they do. Periodically one of them says "God is good!" and then everyone shouts back "All the time!" and then the first one goes "And all the time!" and everyone yells "God is good!" Now there is obvious truth in that but really... It seems to me that the EPS would be better off repeating the morning services but replacing the hymns with contemporary music, I bet people would go then.

The lesser of two weevils...?

Sometimes, life in the city leaves me incredulous. I am not sure if it is Tokyo per se, or just life in general. But honestly, who knew that accidentally leaving a packet of Weetabix in the back of the cupboard where you couldn't see it for a year would result in a plague of little flying bugs?! According to a very informative link courtesy of a good friend, the little ******s are almost certainly rice weevils. I believe they are all dead now, the amount of bleach with which I doused my kitchen almost killed me. The "weevil website" says they are particularly resistant to attempts on their lives and pretend to be dead... it worked too, until I read that. Now I bet they wish they had never darkened my door. I took a somewhat grim satisfaction in obliterating them; it was almost as fun as jongudmund's "shoot people" game, but not quite. The only thing I can't quite figure out is how a packet of weetabix would result in rice weevils and not the other sort.....

Still, as I often say, life here is one Big Old Hurrah...

New bloke arrived on schedule...

The new bloke arrived and he is short and married to a Japanese woman. Is anyone remotely young free single and impossibly good-looking ever going to grace our doors again?! Well I suppose there`s Spencer - no hang on , he`s not single, and even if he was- he is way too young for me! Anyway, where was I? Right, the new bloke. He did alright for his first day I suppose - but he`s going to have to lighten up, he`s very nervous. I suppose my mood didn`t really help either. I got absolutely no sleep last night, worrying about the blasted PSC and when I did get to sleep- I had a weird nightmare about finding a pastor for Deep Space 9.... I seem to be losing my grip on what little sanity I have left, and not getting any sleep at all is definitely NOT helping... I should get to bed.

According to jongudmund, today is National day in Uzbekistan. Happy day.

Pastor Idol (Sorry C--, it was so good I had to nick it!)

It`s been a while, mostly because I`ve had the Koinonia and the PSC to deal with. Koinonia turned out better than the last one which was good. Although, actually, it hasn`t been distributed yet, so it might just be me that holds that opinion.... The last two weekends have been about the visiting pastors and I`ve been exhausted. Tonight was our meeting where we were intending to reach a decision and call one of them. We talked about it, didn`t agree, talked about it some more, didn`t agree and then talked about it some more and STILL didn`t agree. All this punctuated by copious amounts of pizza and praying. I wish it had been even slightly productive. Essentially, I can`t see us ever reaching an agreement where we are all happy and I am gutted. I feel really emotional. I had convinced myself that tonight would be the night to end all the responsibility and the worrying; instead there`s just going to be more of it. It`s endless. The burden I thought would be lifted has just got heavier. I wonder why I ever agreed to do this. I really do. I mean honestly, what do I care who our pastor is, as long as it isn`t someone hideous, I rarely saw the last one anyway. Whichever way you look at it, someone isn`t going to be happy, someone`s feelings are going to get hurt. The whole thing is horrible. I`d rather stay in my room and eat crisps. Instead I have a new teacher arriving tomorrow so I have to go to work extra early to make sure everything is clean and tidy and that we don`t scare the poor chap to death, oh, and I have to prepare his "welcome to the team probabtioner`s pack." I kid you not.