Oh woe is me

Frustrated of encountering roaringly amusing moments in the life of Watski, then totally forgetting them, I purchased a little note book a few weeks ago in which I planned to write little prompting scribbles, from which I would then be able to refer to and aid me in regaling you good people with countless funny stories and anecdotes.

I appreciate this might be against the rules of blogging and am prepared to take whatever punishment comes my way.

However, this little notebook (or 'notie' as I'd christened it - to myself that is, mentioning 'notie' out loud would have had me labelled as funny farm material amidst those that didn't already think that I was), has gone and lost itself. I haven't lost it, I don't lose things - they lose themselves, of their own accord.

Now I have nothing to write about.

You don't know how unlucky you are.

Ship of fools

The surrealness of being on a boat in the middle of the Andaman sea being taught the vagaries of scuba diving by a half Thai-half German Arnold Schwarzenegger soundalike wasn't totally lost on me.

"What the bloody hell am I doing here?" I thought to myself as he explained something else very important that I couldn't understand to me and the 2 other certain deathers sat at the side of me.

The thumbs that were up and pointing in my direction and attached to CJ reminded me why I was here.

We were the 'Introduction to Scuba Diving' group, the membership of which seem to single us out to be talked to patronisingly and be scared witless by other more qualified members on board the boat.

Arnie then said another sentence which ended in '...or you'll be in trouble' before shoving forms under each of our noses with tick boxes which absolved anybody other than me for any blame attached to my impending death.

"You all look petrified" said the dive master as he walked over "Don't worry, Arnie has been instructing for years now and has only lost an average of 3 divers a year - he's lost none so far this year though, which is good news" he continued as he looked at the 3 of us, before cracking himself up at how funny he was, slapping some people on the back then walking to the end of the boat and throwing himself off it into the boats propellor.

I made that last bit up, but it wasn't for the want of wishing it to happen.

"Oh and whatever you do, don't forget to equalise your ears" he said as he went off the regale other boat inhabitants of his underwater tales.



Our instructions once in the water were to paddle across to a boat moored about 20 yards away, wait for Arnie to get there, at which time we would use to rope to aid our descent to the bottom. We'd rehearsed all our hand signals on board and now it was time to put it all into practice.

I had a few hand signals of my own for the divemaster which I wasted no time in utilising once I was in the water.

Getting into the water with the kit on was a job in itself, if I didn't jump in then I was going to fall in anyway so I guess I had no choice. Bobbing around in the water, paddling across to the boat that seemed to be getting further away, I was unsure how it was that I was still above the surface. The weight of the kit I was carrying on my back would have been enough to sink the titanic. I could hardly stand up once I'd put it on in the boat.

"Right - start to descend" Arnie shouted as we all reached the boat. This was easier than it sounds for someone with no buoyancy control, who was clinging for dear life with one hand on the mooring rope and the other on his nose popping his ears for all he was worth.

One of the most uncomfortable half hours of my life followed. I managed to descend to the bottom eventually, but being the middle person of 3 clinging to the rope meant that I had someones flippers kicking me in the head all the time, whilst kicking somebody else in the head with my flippers - all at the same time as trying to control my buoyancy, keep my mask clean, remembering to breathe and popping my ears.

Bobbing back on the surface again waiting for the boat to come around and pick us up Arnie asked us how far down we thought we had gone.

"About 8 or 9 metres?" I reckoned.

Arnie nearly drowned laughing.

"So how deep then?" I asked. Wanting to add the swear words my mind was telling me to use to the end.

"3 and a half, maybe 4" he replied.

And I thought to myself:

'3 and half/4 metres? That's what? 12, maybe 12 and a half feet. Hang on, that's about the depth of the deep end of the local swimming baths. The local swimming baths where I used to swim to the bottom of the deep end in my pyjamas to pick up rubber bricks throughout my schooldays without so much as a second thought.'

"You silly fucker, why didn't you say we were only going that deep?" I shouted.

But he was already climbing on the boat, sharing my stupidity with the divemaster.

Don't mess with the sea.

You see, I’ve never understood the attraction of scuba diving. I’ve always been of the opinion that there is no pleasure that being under the water can give me that would make up for the displeasure that I would get by being stung or bitten by one of it’s usual inhabitants, that or popping an eardrum. OK, I bet it’s nice, peaceful and scenic but I’d rather just stay out of it and have my usual daily burning by the sun if it’s all the same. Sunburn I know how to handle.

This view was emphasised in poetic fashion when I was awoken from my daily frazzling appointment on the beach by the big red thing in the sky by the undignified ‘yelp’ of a man. A man in the sea. A man in the sea yelping. This didn’t look good.

On closer inspection it appeared that the man in the sea from which the ‘yelp’ emanated was the man who occupied one of the two frazzling beds beside CJ and I, the other one was occupied by his partner. Who was now looking on rather concerned.

I’d worked out through process of deduction that he was of Eastern European origin. My deducting process being that he didn’t have blonde hair so he wasn’t Scandinavian, he wasn’t being overtly loud for no reason so he wasn’t American, he wasn’t playing cricket and being loud so he wasn’t Australian, but he did have tight Speedo’s on so in the absence of any other countries in the world he was therefore probably Eastern European, possibly Russian. Which bothered me no end, especially now as I couldn’t work out what was happening.

He was also a bit of a fidget, I’d observed him earlier in the day spending a good 30 minutes clearing the surrounding area of bits of tree, weed and bottles washed in by the tide. This was frowned on somewhat by Old Mother Sea who had obviously not taken to kindly to someone clearing up her own back yard and had paid him back sea style:

"Next time sonny leave the clearing up to me. Have a sting of that, get out of my sea and don’t fanny around with my rubbish again" I could swear I heard the waves say.

He did walk out of the sea, which was harder than it sounds due to the current, holding his right arm straight. And made his way up to the food cart proprietors behind us who made lots of oohing and aahing noises, which obviously meant: ‘get your stuff together, you’re going somewhere where the nosy bastard on the bed next to you doesn’t know where, or why’, and with that they did. Went. Without telling me what was happening. Bastards. I hoped his bloody Russian arm fell off.

But this had deeper, more far reaching consequences than just some Russian guys arm. Earlier in the day, we had booked a couple of days scuba diving trip. It was a trip for CJ masquerading as my birthday present. CJ is an expert diver. I am not. We were going into the sea that had just bitten that man.

And now I’d had seen what was waiting for me in the sea. I wasn’t too sure anymore.

We opodo-ise for the interruption in normal services....

In the absence of any time to write anything of any worth, I thought you might like to see the next installment of the Great Opodo problem.

Since returning from holiday I had a letter from Katie Powell from Opodo, making excuses for why it wasn't sorted. This is my response.

Get a cup of tea before you start, it's a long 'un. But worth it.

Dear Katie

Thank you for your letter dated 15th April. As much as I would like to forget all about this incident, subsequent problems and your arrogant-esque letter which tries and fails to justify your actions has made me even more inclined to write back to further update you on the situation and also to correct some of your assertions.

First of all the update.

We'll pick the story up on the evening of Thursday 31st March. But not before a timelined version of previous events.

Thursday 24th March - answer machine message left from Opodo to myself alerting me to the fact that my flight on the 4th April from Bangkok to Phuket had been changed.
Thursday 24th March - return phonecall from myself to Opodo. No success, promised a call back. No call received.
Friday 25th March - return phonecall from myself to Opodo. No success, promised a call back. No call received.
Saturday 26th March - 2 return phonecalls from myself to Opodo. Told that nobody could help me till the following Tuesday, someone would call back then.
Tuesday 29th March - No call received. Phonecall made to Opodo in absence of one from them. No help, promised a phonecall when resolved.
Wednesday 30th March - No call from Opodo. 3 emails of complaint written to Opodo. No response.
Thursday 31st March (24hours before holiday departure) - phonecall received at 10.21am from Opodo at the same time as I was on hold to them. Success. Phew. An alternative outbound flight had been sourced within 5 minutes of the original one. A confirmation email was promised.

And that's where we left it. One week after the initial contact, lots of inefficiency inbetween and one day before we were to depart on our holiday - it was sorted, after 6 phonecalls from me (at the cost of £3.77 to myself). Or so we thought.

So, now I'd like to respond to some of your assertions in your letter.

"From our records I can see that you returned our call on March 26th 2005..."

The 26th March was actually the 4th time I had returned your call. Fortunately my phonebill has arrived since I have returned. I have evidence.

"...(lots of excuses).... which is why 31st March was the first date that we could make contact with you"

Seriously? You expect me to take this as a reason. Did you write this on April Fools Day? 7 full days after the initial contact, less than 24 hours before I was due to depart the country on the first leg of my trip was the first time that anybody in Opodo could talk to me about it? If this is your idea of customer service then you seriously need to review your procedures.

Now back to the story.

At 17.19pm on Thursday 31st March. 7 hours after I was told a confirmation email was on its way, I still had not received it. So again I called Opodo (7th time). I was told that there had been some problems with the email generation and it would be sent soon. It was. About 30 minutes later. The footnote at the bottom said: "Created at 17.30pm". I'm sure there is some novel explanation for 17.30 being the time it was created and not 10.30 which was the time of the original phonecall.

I was in the process of printing it out when I noticed that the times of the return flight had been altered. And I knew nothing at all about it.

Another call to Opodo (18.14pm - 8th time). The GDS team were otherwise engaged and someone would call me back straight away. Ha. I'd heard that one before.

Another 2 phonecalls to Opodo (18.48pm - 9th and 10th time). I spent 16 minutes talking to a lady who wasn't sure why it had happened but assured me that Opodo had lots of foolproof systems in place which made sure that errors like this would have been picked up before it became an issue. Impressed as I was by her youthful naivety I couldn't help but comment on why it was that if there were lots of foolproof systems in Opodo, that I was the only fool picking anything up. What would happen if this wasn't seen as an error by the system as it was actually right? She didn't think it was.

At this time I was also impressed to hear the excuse 'the airline are looking to customers to help them out after the tsunami'. We later found out that Phuket airlines had planned some time before to downgrade their services to the one 17.25pm a day from the 1st April due to the low demand arising from the end of a season, nothing to do with the Tsunami. This was information direct from their Bangkok desk. Disgusting doesn't even begin to describe it.

To cut a long conversation short, she too was unable to do anything about it. Which wasn’t entirely surprising. She did say that someone came into the office at 8am the following morning and would be working on my case immediately. Oh good. That was reassuring.

So. We had a situation where it took a week to get back to me about an outbound flight which had changed, only for the return flight to then be changed. And for no-one to tell me about it. All about 15 hours before we were due to depart. How confident would you feel on a scale of 1-10 of me getting a phonecall, and getting it sorted? I wasn't sure why the return flight had to be touched at all. But I'm sure you'll have some travel agency type flannel for it.

So the following morning I depart for Heathrow, wanting to be full of the holiday spirit but having the 'impending doom' monkey on my back. 8am came and went, so did 9am and so did 10am. I could wait no more. 10.15am I rang Opodo, and again at 10.19am. I rang Opodo 8 times between 10.15am and 10.58am in all. For interest, the total cost of all 18 phonecalls to Opodo was £15.90.

Eventually we got to a stage where the original return flight was re-instated. Not before Lisa apologised for not communicating the change - so it was the real plan - the foolproof system wouldn't have picked it up after all. I checked the details about 4 times with Lisa: our original outbound flight had changed by 5 minutes and our original return flight was the same. 'Yes' she said. I asked for email confirmation, which I checked at the airport - but I didn't receive any. And not before time. The flight was then called.

Landing at Bangkok airport, I switched on my phone. It beeped and told me that I had a new voicemail message. My stomach dropped. I listened. I had 2 infact. The first one was my Mum bless her, wishing us a nice holiday. The second one was Amanda from Opodo, our next heroine in the great Opodo sham. Only Amanda didn't turn out to be a heroine after all. If there isn't a role as Chief excuse maker at Opodo, which I find hard to believe, then may I suggest you create one immediately and put Amanda into the role.

The message lasted about 5 minutes and cost £6.50 to access.

To be honest, I couldn't really tell you what Amanda had said as I'd lost the will to live after about 4 minutes. But it contained such well worn favourite phrases as 'not our fault' and 'doing all we can'. I was even supposed to be impressed by her obtaining someone's mobile phone number in Phuket and ringing them when they weren't expecting it.

The general gist was that apparently the airline had changed their mind after I'd had it confirmed, and that it was now 4.30pm British time on Friday afternoon, that Amanda wouldn't be back in till Monday morning to help us by which time we'd be in the air from Bangkok to Phuket. "You're on your own buddy" in other words. Which was a novel interpretation of ‘doing all we can’. So not only was the pre-holiday build up taken away from me, it was also happening whilst I was away.

But the problem here was that in all her bluster Amanda hadn't actually told me which flight had been changed, and also to which times - so I listened again for some clues. She insinuated that it was the return one and I felt it must be as that was the only one we were having the problems with now and also she said that I couldn't be helped by Opodo until Monday morning and by that time I would be in the air. So I assumed that flight was OK and it must be the return flight which was the problem. We decided to wait until we got to the airport on Monday to try and sort that one out rather than try and play 'give us a clue' with the Thai airline phone operators.

The thing here is that in the 8 full days since this started, not once was I offered a solution, all I was given was excuse after excuse. If at the first contact I'd have been told:

"Sorry Mr Watski, your flight has been cancelled by the airline - we've only got space on this one leaving at 5.25pm. So you can either take this one or cancel - we'll refund your money and you can try your luck elsewhere"

I may have mumbled and grumbled about it a little bit, but at least I would have known my options, where I stood and most importantly would have had time to do something about it. But at this time Opodo had bumbled and fannied around for so long not returning phonecalls that the options were now severely restricted. I was actually so angry I sat by the pool in Bangkok on the first day of my holiday writing this letter, not knowing whether I had a flight or not on the second leg of it.

So anyway. We get to the airport on Monday morning. We actually got there late for our flight (10.50am for a flight due to depart at 10.45am) due to a combination of things. Which was a stroke of luck as it turns out as the 10.45am flight Lisa told us 4 times we were on was also the flight we weren't booked on. We asked Thai airways whether we were actually down to be on any flight at all that day with them. 'No' was the reply. Apparently we'd been cancelled off the flight on Friday 1st April and not rescheduled on any others.

We then went to the Phuket airways desk to ask them if we were down to be on any of their flights that day.

Can you imagine being in an airport, in a foreign country, walking around the airlines asking them if they'd mind checking if we were booked to fly with them at all that day as we weren't sure anymore. Is there anything more soul destroying? If I were them I would have also have given me the pitying looks they were giving me. The perverse thing was that we were paying Opodo to be our agent, whilst doing ALL the work ourselves. That's some scam you've got going there. No wonder you don’t need anyone there to return phonecalls.

Apparently we were down to be on the 17.25pm Phuket airlines flight. Which was about 6 hours away, and also the same flight which I'd told Opodo all those days ago that it wasn't convenient. Funny that. Did Opodo actually do anything at all in the previous week and a half except take our money and put two fingers up to us? You’ll have to remind me what it was if you did anything.

Luckily a lovely lady from Phuket airlines took pity on us and managed to negotiate us onto a Thai air flight which flew an hour or so later - at their own expense of course. Now that's customer service. It took you 10 days to bumble around and get to nowhere, yet it took a Thai lady speaking hardly any English to sort it out in about 20 minutes. The Thais could teach you lot a thing or two.

I can almost see your reply now which will heavily feature blaming the airline and everybody else, and give some believeable reason why absolutely not one single person at all from Opodo was capable of getting back to me within a week. But the airline aren't to blame, as you say in your letter: airlines need to make changes to their original flight programme. All Phuket airlines did was alter their schedule. It was your mismanagement of the consequences that has cocked this up for everyone except yourselves. And you're getting paid for it. It is plain to anybody with eyes in their head that if you had sorted it out right at the outset - the 24th March, then the airlines and us would have had options and wouldn't have been squeezed into the corner we were squeezed into.

To answer your final question: Yes we had a great holiday thank you. But it was very much in spite of you rather than because of you.

So what I want you to do is:

1: Give me the real reason why my second leg flight wasn’t initially sorted out until 10 minutes before my first leg flight was called, when you knew of the situation 8 days before. Include reasons for the failure of any one person at all within Opodo to ring me once.

2: Apologise that you messed up. Apologise for all the delays in sorting it out. Apologise for your incompetence impacting on the enjoyment of my holiday. Apologise that if it wasn't for me then you lot would still be buzzing round like wingless flies. And no caveats either - don't patronise me or demean yourself by trying to justify anything.

3: Furnish me with the address of your ombudsman. I intend to complain to the body you're affiliated to. If you haven't already been thrown out.

4: Furnish me with the name and email address of the top bod within Opodo. You know the guy that makes all the decisions? His/her boss. So I can alert them to how incompetent you all are.

5: Refund me the cost of the flights. You don't deserve the money. I actually feel sick that your company actually made some profit from it. You've not done one thing to justify earning it.

6: Refund me the cost of the 18 phonecalls to you and 1 voicemail access in Thailand (£15.90+£6.50= £22.40). I have copies of the bill if you would like them. I would bill you for the cost of the other times I accessed my voicemail in Thailand to try and understand what Amanda was saying if I could but that is masked in other business.

7: Donate the whole lot to the Red Cross Tsunami aid appeal.

Nothing else will suffice. As you can see, I’m still extremely angry about all this.

I had to laugh when I saw the Opodo strapline: "Opodo - travel your way". Is it because you have to travel your way because Opodo aren't going to do anything for you.

Small world

So anyway...

You go on holiday half way across the world.

On one of the 17 days you are away you decide to go scuba diving.

You go with one of the countless trips that are available to one of the countless diving sites around Phuket.

You are divided up on your boat of 18 divers into groups of 3.

You get put in a group with a couple from Wakefield who are on their honeymoon.

You get on well with them.

You decide to meet them later on for a drink.

You get talking.

You find out a bit about each other.

You find out that you used to sit next to her best mate at work.

You also find out that he used to go out with CJ's sister at university for a year.

Welcome back

Land back in England 6.30pm Sunday night - raining and cold.

Drive home - get stuck in traffic.

Arrive home at 10.30pm - thankful to go to bed after 24 hours awake.

Wake up 4am bolt upright - Thai breakfast time.

Wake up again at 7.30 pm and go for a shower - still raining.

Go to car - still raining, and now cold too.

Try to start car - battery flat.

Remembers convesation with CJ 5 minutes prior when we both left the house at the same time:

"Oh I've forgot my house keys, never mind - you'll be back before me"

Looks down at attire - still wearing shorts, t-shirt and flip flops.

Ring RAC - an hour and 15 minutes before they can get to me.

Consider saying:

'An hour and 15 minutes? I've got a blog to write you know - my audience need me. I've been away for 2 weeks. What's the chances of getting prioritised above lone women and women stranded with children? They get all the good deals anyway'

Realise audience probably give less of a shit than RAC.

Decide not to.

"Yes that's fine" I say instead.

See notepad and pen in car. Decide to write life story. An hour and 15 minutes should cover it.

Almost complete the word: "Bollocks" before the pen runs out.

Never mind. It's probably finished anyway.

Oh Lord - is this all you have in store for me?

Perfect Paris

"Ze bread iz 4 Euroz pleaz monsiuer"

I didn’t actually ask for bread but much is the limits of my French that our culinary delights in Paris this weekend consisted of "Pain au Chocolate", Croissants and Orange Juice. I knew GCSE French would come in handy someday. If only they had a table tennis table for me to say that I like "playing on" ("je joue" for the French illiterates) then I would have been made. That really is the limits of my French.

I find that you can get a long way in other non-English speaking countries (and in life generally) by muttering, pointing, shrugging and just smiling inanely at people - if nothing else they think your crazy and you usually get what you want quickly without the pointless conversations that it seems French people like to indulge in when they food shop.

So this weekend myself and my girlfriend (who for the purposes of this blog we will call CM) spent three nights in Paris. I love Paris. It was CM's first visit to the glorious city and I was keen to get her initial impression. I remember my first time in Paris; I was inspired by the culture, the cuisine, the weather, the cosmopolitan feel to every little backroad bar and restaurant. Her first comment consisted of, "everyone looks like they do in the Tricolore books!". To those that don’t know, Tricolore is a textbook that accompanied French Lessons in English schools during the late 80's-early-90s! She hit the nail right on the head with that one.

The Tricalore workbook features sections dedicated to different situations you might find yourself in, in France; Shopping, Eating Out, Playing Sport, etc - these sections featured black and white photos of (very badly dressed) French people in that particular situation. The books at our school were probably about 10 years old, and these photos would almost certainly be accompanied by biro scribblings, courtesy of a rebelious 13 year old kid, of extra-ordinarily large penises for the boys and breasts for the lady (not ones to leave out the female the kids at our school!) - although some of the girls in the book did look like boys so it was hard to tell. If you were lucky, then you might get a big biro speech bubble of them telling each other what they wanted to do. For some reason, that wasn’t translated into French.

je joue au tennis de table


Anyway, we had an awesome time and did all of the perennial tourist sights; Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Champs Elysee, Arc de Triumphe, ate some magnificent food, drank some great wine, bought a beret, we somehow managed to insult numerous French people, and we then flew home.

So our flight home is at 8:35am French Time, which is 7:35 UK time = getting up frickin early. CM did the normal thing of setting her alarm about 3 hours before she needs to be up so she can press snooze 12,000 times. We now have to check, double and triple check everything before leaving as we've both got an annoying habit of losing and forgetting things. You would have thought that as we were only going for a three night break, that there wouldn’t be a great deal to lose or forget. Think again.

Things we forgot/lost:

- Entire make-up bag
- Wallet with all credit cards
- *My Black jumper
- Address or any contact information of hotel
- 20EURO note (which also happened to double up as money for our taxi to the airport)
- New jumper from Zara on Champs Elysee
- Adapter plug
- Mobile Phone Charger


*Not actually lost. This was left on the chair in the restaurant by CM, on purpose I think. Her plot was foiled after the French waiter ran after us clutching it in his hands.

If the results of your calculations are anything like mine, then you'd have worked out that we averaged two lost/forgotten items per day. Not a great average considering that we will soon be adding a baby to our list of responsibilities. We did however, immediately start work on re-addressing the balance:

Things we borrowed/stole:

- One Hotel Towel for our second toilet at home

- The entire contents of the mini-bar; replacing the spring water with tap water, the box of peanuts with hotel soap (same weight) and the toblerone carefully opened and the emply box simply turned the other way round back into the fridge.

- Two Further (and later, ruined) Hotel Towels to be used as a cushion to stop the dripping tapping noise outside the window. This later turned into a splatting noise so the towels life was taken in vain.

- One Coke Can from the minibar. Although not actually drank, the coke can provided the perfect door-stop for the lift doors, thus preventing the lift (which was conveniently positioned outside our room) from moving up and down the noisy shaft between the hours of 11pm and 9am (our sleeping time). We then had major guilt feelings of little old lady with big suitcase who’s room was on the top floor and immediately removed it, and later drank the coke.

All in all it was a great break, and I'd thoroughly recommend Paris to anyone. If you go and you just happen to be staying in a hotel just off the Champs Elysee in room 525 then I suggest checking your mini-bar, towel stash and remote control batteries (as if we would!) before checking in.

mmmmini bar

Happy Birthday

Watskis birthday today!


Many happy returns

You have to kiss a few frogs......

So, Watski has asked me to put something on his blog, mind you, I wasn’t sure, he did ask me ages ago then it went quiet so I thought he must have thought better of it!

Our last conversation went something like this..
Watski’s mum “Have a good holiday, make sure you use a high sun factor cream, love you”.
Watski’s reply, “ I will if I get this flight sorted out before I die……….

So what do I talk about, do you really want to hear the ramblings of a fifty something….very early fifties I hasten to add!
I feel like the teenager who has been left in charge of her parent’s house on the phone to her friends……”Whew, I never thought he’d go, when I can find the drink do you want to come over for a party, we can play the music really loud, and don’t forget the fags but if you’ve got anything else…..! Then we can go in the garden and frighten all the frogs away.
Or we can have a cosy evening and talk about things you don’t like to in front of your parents…..like SEX.

I’ve decided to join an online dating agency as all my friends are married so no longer want to go out on the pull! Well they probably do, but it would be very hard to explain to their spouse if they arrived home with a body in tow.
“Oh instead of the two for one drinks the pub had another brilliant offer, spend £20 and get to take this gorgeous specimen home for the night!”

Watski Jnr said I ought not to put my real age as I look about 10 years younger than I am (I put this down to my mum’s marvellous genes, she’s 70 and doesn’t look a day over 50) and if I didn’t I’d get replies from boring sad old men in their late 50’s and 60’s looking for a housemaid to look after them till they pop their clogs!

But I didn’t listen, and guess what?

Yep, all the old men have replied in their droves.

Now don’t get me wrong, I can hardly be ageist at my age, but what happens to men when they reach their 50’s? Since my husband and I went our separate ways I’ve had dates, most of them being with men a lot younger than me, and I’ve enjoyed their company, their vibrancy, their ambition, their zest for life…and then I’ve been out with a couple of men my age, one a policeman and one a company director. You’d think I’d have loads of interesting conversations with them but no, all the talk was of when they can finally finish work and retire.

And what happens to men’s appearance as they get older? Why do they not look after themselves? I look with horror as I see photo after photo of Robin Cook look-alikes. Perhaps these men are really lovely and it’s perhaps shallow of me not to look past the initial photo, but come on, there’s got to be some kind of physical attraction.
I can’t be the only woman who will look at a photo of, say Brad Pitt and then one of Mickey Rourke and choose Brad, am I?

So anyway I went on a date last week.

With a 41 year old.

I had seen his photo and he looked very nice, and he’d seen mine and he’d contacted me and we’d emailed each other.
And as he walked in the pub I thought yes, he looks ok, had a nice beige top on, blue jeans and then as my eyes travelled down…

RED TRAINERS!!!

The search continues…….

im sure youre a good laugh really Robin...

Voices in the night...

I stumbled out of my bed this morning and, after leaving my pc on through the night, found this transcript on my instant messenger. It looks as though someone had been trying to contact me in the night......


Watski says:
sat in bangkok airport

Watski says:
late for flight (my fault)

Watski says:
missed it

Watski says:
which is a stroke of luck

Watski says:
as it turns out that the flight that we'd missed

Watski says:
is also the flight that Opodo

Watski says:
didnt fucking book us on

Watski says:
so we missed a flight that we weren't even on in the first place

Watski says:
fuckers

Watski says:
we managed to get on a flight though - a couple of hours later

Watski says:
and even got the airline to do it free of charge

Watski says:
Opodo are going to get it rammed right up their arse

Watski says:
it would have been less hassle turning up at the airport booked on spec

Watski says:
going now