Paleo Off

So today I was when I was paying for my bottle of whiskey from the Bottle Shop (yes I drink whiskey - straight - I am almost 32 you know) the Kiwi guy serving me said 'brilliant' when I asked him for the Jim Beam, and then said 'here you go love' when he gave me my change. Er, are you taking the piss out of my accent? So far I've not heard any Aucklander use that terminology, although my friend at work does like to try and say 'are you alright?.... Lovely' in a Dick Van Dyke type accent which gets even more confusing when you remember that he is a Tahitian from New Caledonia, whose first language is French. C'est vrai. Or, as they say here, 'True, ay'.

In fact, I feel rather like I've been lost in translation since starting work at the gym. They speak another language. I've moved from the world of telly when all you hear is 'turn over', 'wrap', 'call sheet', 'over-run', 'schedule', 'main artistes' and ' because he's a c#$*', to the world of the super-fit: 'cutting', 'loading', 'TRX', 'Cross Fit', 'hammys', 'can I get a spot?', 'what's your max, bro?'... It's another world. You'll be pleased to hear I've become quite the dab hand at spotting people's weights. Although the massive body builder who weighs 4 times as much as me tends to look slightly apprehensive when they press the instructor button for assistance and all 5 foot, 54kg of me rocks up to help them. You and me both, bro.

My main revelation here has been that fitness and health is definitely all relative. Back at the BBC I was easily one of the fitter and healthier employees - mainly because I knew where the gym was and didn't eat chips and Mars Bars every day from Rendez-Vu (ahem). I felt slim. I felt energetic. I felt SMUG. So coming to NZ and working full time in the fitness industry has been somewhat of a shock. I am no longer one of the super-fit and healthy people. Apparently - out here - my diet is shocking, I don't work out enough and I am carrying too much body fat. The other day I was on my break and sneaking some chocolate in the cafe when one of the personal trainers walked past and shouted 'OH MY GOD SHE'S EATING CHOCOLATE'. Everyone turned round. I felt like the rapist who'd suddenly been identified in a line up. You could have heard a tape measure drop. I am also (apparently) the only person who orders butter with their bran muffin and whole egg omelettes instead of egg whites only. And full fat milk in my flat white. Quite frankly, I'm surprised I'm still working there at all.

So in the name of Fitness and Keeping Up Appearances, I am going to have a - limited - go at the Paleo Diet. For the uninitiated this is essentially the caveman diet, removing most starchy carbs and dairy and essentially eating lots of meat and vegetables. So like any other protein rich diet really. But since apparently everyone at the gym is either doing Paleo or the Ketogenic Diet (look it up), I feel obliged to make some kind of effort. This means pain au chocolat are out, grapefruit and steak are in.

Dear Lord, what have I become?

I am also a lot less fit in NZ. Somewhere in that 31 hour trauma known as 'the flight', it seems my endurance and strength got sucked out of me and quite frankly I now struggle to get past the warm up. I'm sure body attack was never this hard in the UK. It may have something to do with the 100 degree heat of the studios. Apparently, in the southern  hemisphere, air conditioning is for wimps. I've never wanted to throw up whilst exercising quite as much as I do here. This to the point where I actually did vomit into my mouth at the end of body combat last week. We were on stage doing the cool down. It was not a happy moment: 'Oh my god I can't throw up in front of 60 people...' So I did what any self respecting instructor does: I swallowed it and told my colleague. Who then told everyone in the class, loudly into his microphone: 'Sarah just threw up in her mouth'. Gratifyingly, they all looked impressed.

I'm telling you.... a different world.

Overheard at the Gym

'Yo is that a dude or a chick? I can't tell. Look at the jawline. He is oooooone ugly lady....'

The Hit List

Right, so how come working in a gym has caused me to gain 5 lbs? Huh? HUH? What in the name of Ferris Bueller (Bueller?) is up with that? As my South African colleague would say, 'that's crazy as nuts, ay'.

(I think it was 'crazy' as nuts. It might have been 'true as nuts'. There was something to do with nuts. Whatever he said was about as relevant as nuts, so I feel at liberty to pretty much freestyle that particular gem).

Anyway, yes, I am fatter despite apparently moving around more and being exposed to New Zealand's fittest and most beautiful on a daily basis. And I am not happy about it. I had assumed that one of the benefits of working in a gym would be that you would exercise more. Surely it's like working in hospitality or retail, right? When I worked in a nightclub, I had about 6 months of being a little alcoholic (and when I say alcoholic, I mean that I didn't pass out after my first pinot spritzer). During my career in catering, I developed a taste for having balsamic glaze drizzled artistically around the edge of my plate, irrespective of what I was eating. And then there was the summer I worked in a Latin American restaurant and insisted in having Tabasco sauce with EVERYTHING. (This particular fad ended one unhappy lunchtime when I drowned my french fries in said sauce, and ended up bawling whilst trying to down a pint of milk).

One of the truisms of working in any industry is the irrational hatred you develop for people who make your job harder. When I worked in TV and produced the post-production scripts for subtitles, I began to really REALLY hate all the actors who mumbled/ had regional accents (apart from Birmingham)/ changed their lines. You might be the nicest actor in the world, but if you're not saying what's down in the script, you are not my friend. When I worked in retail, I loathed anyone who didn't hang their clothes back up properly on the hangers or, god forbid, upset my T-Shirt stacks in Ted Baker. (We used to have a little table with a T-Shirt folding metal square. Even writing about it now brings back nightmarish memories of hours, I tell you, HOURS, spent perfecting those little pink and white t shirts, only for some idiot in a Ralph Lauren shirt to come along and destroy my 90/90 patterns. Dark times indeed). Anyway, I have discovered that my nemesis on the gym floor is Men Who Don't Return Weights. This particular breed of male thinks nothing of stacking 100kg on either side of the leg press, and then leaving it for some poor unfortunate gym instructor (ME) to try and pull off at the end of the day. I know who these members are, and they are on the Shortty Hit List.

On the plus side it does make me feel less guilty if I miss a body pump class.

My last gymnasium anecdote is this: we all wear name badges with an 'inspirational sporting quote' emblazoned beneath our name. Gutted for anyone who picked Lance Armstrong before June 2012. Anyway, I picked a quote from Joe Namath, before realising like I pretty much sound like I'm propositioning all our members for sex:

"If you aren't going all the way, why go at all?"

At least that explains why I've been offered so many tours of Auckland from 'friendly' members.

Now please nobody panic, but I have bought a car. Which I drive, on a daily basis. Luckily there is pretty much just one straight road from the flat to the gym, so minimal chances of getting lost/ running over pigeons (I have form)/ driving in completely the wrong lane. I know what you're thinking: this is the girl who took NINE attempts to pass her driving test, and probably could have bought a house by now with all the money she spend on lessons and tests. But let's focus on the positive here people: I did eventually pass my test, and so far nobody is dead because of me. (As far as records show). When I told the Office Princess on skype that I was driving in New Zealand she looked, quite frankly, horrified, and asked in an incredulous tone of voice 'Do they drive on the other side of the road there?' Oh ye of little faith. To quote one of the greats - Cher in Clueless - 'I drive really good'. Although this does bring back vivid memories of my friend Adrian, whose favourite greeting to me was another classic Clueless moment:

'What do you know? You're a Virgin Who Can't Drive'.


Overheard at the Gym

GYM INSTRUCTOR: Someone once threw up right in that water fountain there.
ME: Really? Ewwww. But that doesn't happen a lot, right?
GYM INSTRUCTOR: (OBVIOUSLY) Of course. People vomit here all the time. They go hard. It's this gym.

I'm scared....

Educating Sarah

So I've been in Auckland for eleven days, and already experienced being soaked through to the skin by a torrential rainfall. Twice. In the same day. Now I realise that, in the context of Hurricane Sandy, amid the stories of thousands of desperate New Yorkers who have had the sides of their apartments blown off and are panic buying bottled water (according to the NZ Herald), my plight may seem rather slight. But, seeing as one of the main attractions of moving to New Zealand was the weather, I feel that I am entitled to feeling somewhat cheated. Especially since, as my flatmate informed me cheerfully upon my dripping wet entrance earlier today, 'it rains 5 times more in Auckland than in Birmingham'. Er, I don't recall that Fact Of No Small Importance being mentioned by the Lonely Planet?

On a separate note, please everyone note my ryhming couplet: plight/ slight. I knew that English Literature degree would come good some day. (2:1 Hons. I know).

Since this is looking like an educational entry, I thought I would share with you What I Have Learned Since October 22nd, 2012. Quite a catchy title, you'll agree?

1. Don't leave packing til the afternoon of your flight. You will forget lots of Useful Things. Like the year's supply of contact lenses you ordered 3 months ago, congratulating yourself at the time on your pre-planning. And promptly left on your bedroom floor.

2. If you do leave packing to the eleventh hour, do not then arrange to have your extra stuff shipped 24 hours later from the UK. You will recall mid-flight the 101 things you forgot to sort (contact lenses, silver princess shoes - not the ones with Soap Awards spunk on them FYI - phone charger etc.) It is by that time way too late to call your mother to ask her to add these essential items in, because your extra bag is already en route to NZ. You will feel like crying, and hate everyone who told you to start packing 2 weeks ago. Those self-righteous idiots. Who were right.

3. Taking a 30 hour flight is not unlike running a marathon - at some point, I'd say about 18 hours in (miles), you Hit The Wall. You no longer know who you are, where you're going, nor do you care. You have watched every single episode of Modern Family on the in-flight entertainment, and happily reminisced to the UK top 40 hits from 1999 (Mambo Number 5). Now you just want to kill yourself. And everyone else in the immediate 10m range.

4. Nobody here says G'Day.

5. Even if you say it to them first.

6. Every other person is from the UK. Don't expect to feel special. You're sooooooooo not. In fact, I'd say you're in the majority.

7. The bus drivers are way friendlier here than in Birmingham. Although they do have a somewhat dry sense of humour. One driver told me the other day in a very serious tone of voice, 'Next time you get on the bus with a coffee...' - I prepare to be scolded - 'you bring two: one for the driver'. Can you imagine a bus driver in Nechelles daying that? Do bus drivers even venture into Nechelles?!

8. Remember you're not working at the BBC anymore. It's no longer OK to explain to someone that your favourite expression for the menstrual period is evacuating copious amounts of blood from your c***. (Cue shocked Australian Gym Instructor: "I wasn't expecting the See You Next Tuesday...")

9. Don't use a Westpac ATM when you only have one debit card available to use, It may get swallowed by the machine, and you will find yourself stranded in the bank at 17:41 along with a distraught Russian homestay student and elderly Australian on her way to the opera, arguing with a total jobsworth of a Kiwi employee. True story.

10. There really are are a lot of sheep.

On the plus side nobody believes I'm from Birmingham, due to lack of accent. Yam alright our kid...

The Laws of Leaving

The Laws of Leaving


So tomorrow is my last day at the BBC, and I’m pretty sure everyone’s gonna miss me. That’s despite the Office Italians asking me on a daily basis, ‘haven’t you left yet?’ and the Office Gay merrily telling me that next week it’ll be  all ‘Sarah Who?... That’s showbusiness!’ I have been told that they’re looking forward to having the volume in the office being dialled down once I’m gone, although they also informed me that they’re sure they’ll still be able to hear me from New Zealand - carried on the wind. I think they intended this comment to be offensive, but I actually found it pleasantly whimsical.

I also just wanted to write the word, ‘whimsical’.

I do feel somewhat cheeky having leaving drinks, given my previous form for leaving do’s i.e. holding lots of them. In fact when I mentioned leaving drinks the predominant response seemed to be not, ‘Oh yes, count me in’ but rather, ’what, AGAIN?!’ I was telling my Mum that I feel a bit like the equivalent of a closing down sale that never closes, and she informed me that I am the ‘DFS of Leaving Do’s’. Excellent.

I am a bit apprehensive about leaving the BBC (again), mainly because I always tend to hate the next job I go to and cry a lot: I moved to Melbourne and worked at an Italian café I hated. Cue many tears. Researching on Coronation Street. That was about 12 months of hysteria (my colleague asked on a daily basis, ‘have you cried yet, sweetie?’). Hustle last summer. That was a lot of tears for a job that I only managed to endure for 2 months. Although actually when I think about it my friend called me ‘Tiny Tears’ when I was leaving uni in Leeds, so perhaps it’s not the BBC, it’s more that I’m not great with change. So spare a thought for the unfortunate individual who’ll be sat next to me on the plane….

The Office Princess just informed me that, for the next 6 months, anything that goes wrong will be blamed on me. She told me, ‘that’s the law of leaving. You’re not here to defend yourself. Any f***ups will all be your fault’. How depressing. And how true.

So since I’m about to depart the Beeb, I thought I’d compile the following:

The 10 Best Things about Working in Television

1.      The Awesome Catering OK on big dramas this might actually be true, but when you’re at unit base on Doctors… as the Office Gay put it ‘The chef hates his job and it’s reflected in his food. You can taste the minimum wage in every mouthful’.

2.      The Conversations you overhear:

[BUSY PRODUCTION OFFICE. GENERAL HUBBUB. SUDDEN SILENCE DESCENDS AND…]

PRODUCER: I think I’d quite like to be gang raped.

3.      The stringent interview process: ‘Let's look him up on Facebook.... Oh he looks like an absolute twat….’

4.      Judgement Central that is the Production Office: I’d say we give new people about ten minutes before we decide – One Of Us…. or Person I Will be Studiously Avoiding for the Duration of their Block.

5.      The glamour of working with actors: My favourite task ever was during my first week at Corrie, when I had to ask Simon Gregson how much he weighed for a script. He was asleep in the Green Room ‘cause he was ill and I had to wake him up. He pretty much looked like he wanted to kill me. That was awesome.

6.      Everyone who works in TV is kind of flaky Nobody really knows what they want to do - hence why everyone is on short term contracts - except something to do with 'directing'. Or 'writing'. Except for the Media Types who are clearly destined for ‘Development’. Nobody is exactly sure what they do - we just know that they get paid more than us.

7.      You start to lose your grip on reality I spent about a week in 2009 waking up every night at 2am in a cold sweat thinking ‘OH MY GOD HOW ARE THE POLICE GOING TO DISCOVER THE PLATTS’ FAKE SUICIDE??!’ And then trying to remind myself, it’s fictional…

8.      The generous pay packet and benefits. Oh wait...
      

9.      The scripts. And more scripts. Especially during triple banking. Or, as we like to call it, triple wanking…

10. The Audience Duty Log  And sometimes you get gems that make everything worthwhile….

Doctors (Daytime Drama)

TX Date: 09/10/2012

Felt that the content of the programme was inappropriate and should not have been

broadcast. I was rather surprised at the contents of this programme that I watched

yesterday, which I quite like, I watch it on and off. Apparently one of the, I don't know

whether she's a Doctor or she works within the surgery. I think its an Indian lady, she

was honestly somebody that was doing a sex chat line. I'm absolutely astounded

considering what's going on with Jimmy Savell at the moment and there's a debate

about what happened within the BBC, that you include a story line where a girl is, you

know, pretending to spank herself, pretending to have an orgasm at 1:45 in the

afternoon. It was totally inappropriate. Then her friend came in, I don't know whether

he was a doctor or another Indian looking person, and he was laughing cause he was

listening to her and then the next call ..

Life Without Cake

A Brave New World

So I don’t think it’s too melodramatic to say that studying nutrition has ruined my life. And when I say life, I mean eating cake. Last night I got in and was tired and thought ‘ooooh, I really fancy a hot chocolate and some French baguette with butter and jam’. However, my nutrition/ PT Head screamed ‘STOP!! What are you thinking, you idiot? The carbohydrates and sucrose are going to send your blood sugar sky high, releasing insulin and putting you at risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes. That simple carbohydrate jam is going to get immediately stored as fat. White baguettes are high GI and again are going to cause release of insulin – which is going to turn your body into the ultimate storage device. Basically you are eating lard on a plate. You may as well just inject the fat into your stomach, cause that’s where it’s going to end up. Putting you at future risk of CHD, strokes and heart attack’.

So I had salmon and peas instead. Omega 3 and low GI carbohydrate. Do you see what I have become?!!!

My eating fears have been only exacerbated by reading an article on the BBC news site about the UK’s fattest man – who weighs 40 stone. Do you know what the headline was? ‘Food has ruined my life’. Not exactly true is it, Chub? Food has enabled you to live – you just decided to eat the whole cake. If you need some motivation to diet, I suggest you take a look at his photo. It put me right off my almond croissant.

On the subject of headlines, this week I have also read about ‘Popcorn Lung’ (a real condition, apparently) and, my favourite headline so far: ‘Cat goes for flea bath, is accidentally euthanised’. Oh my god. Apparently the owner had signed the euthanasia papers, thinking they were registration forms:

Reportedly, staff had asked him if he wanted to keep the bodies, which was when realization set in of what had happened to Lady.

"He asked me if I wanted to keep the bodies," says Conway. "It was like a blank stare back at each other for the first 10 seconds, then he immediately grabbed the papers I thought were registration forms and told me I had signed the papers."

What’s the moral of this story? READ THE SMALLPRINT BEFORE YOU SIGN!! IT MAY MENTION DEATH!! And possibly avoid all veterinarians in the greater Boston area.

Yesterday I had my regular meeting in the kitchen with Creepy Security Guard. I feel a bit mean calling him that, but he is. Ever since he told me that I had looked nice at our Christmas party a few years back: ‘You were wearing those high heels weren’t you?’.... Anyway, I seem to always manage to time my afternoon cup of tea to coincide with his break. This is definitely not on purpose. At least, not on my part. It doesn’t seem to matter if I move it forward or back half an hour – there he is. Of course I never bump into any hot actors or camera men in the kitchen, EVER. But Creepy Security Guard? Every freaking day.

Anyway, he said ‘you and me again Sarah’. And I replied, cringing as I said it, ‘Oooh yes, people will start to talk’. He then commented, ‘we should run away together, like that teacher and the schoolgirl.’ As I was contemplating my reply to that one, he added, ‘are you like me? Rooting for them?’ This left me a bit stumped, because the teacher is 30 and the girl is 15 and I’m not really ‘rooting’ for a possible paedophile. So I came up with, ‘Er……’ as he went on, ‘They’re a bit like Bonnie and Clyde aren’t they? You hope they don’t get caught?’ Right. Bonnie and Clyde, the homicidal lovers who went on a killing spree across America. I’m fairly certain, had I been alive in 1933, I would have been on the side of the law. Call me square, but I’d kind of prefer that my potential future murderer was behind bars. But perhaps that’s just me.

The Office Gay has been reminiscing about his favourite actor’s names. The winner? ‘Fiston’. When this unfortunate guy was filming with us, the joy the crew took joy in saying ‘Fiston in Make-up’. ‘You’ll be getting Fiston in about 5 minutes’. ‘They’re getting Fiston in the office right now’…. It really is the joke that keeps on giving. Poor old Fiston.

OVERHEARD AT THE BBC

ME: I’m just enjoying a Kitkat.

OFFICE SARCASTIC: Did you slip a few fingers inside you?

ME: No.

[PAUSE]

ME: Cause I’m on my period.

(Sorry).

Don't Take on the Americans

Don’t take on the Americans

So I’ve discovered why Coke is the most universally understood word on the globe. It’s not because it’s the world’s favourite drink – it’s because it’s very easy to understand. Whereas, apparently, the word ‘water’ is not. I have tried to order water several times in American restaurants, and the conversation generally goes something like this:

Me: Please can I have a water?

Waitress: I’m sorry?

Me: Water?

Waitress: (IMMENSE CONFUSION) War-ter??

Me: Yes, a waaaar-ter?

At this point generally one of my cousins interjects to explain I want a ‘waaaaah-da’. And then everyone looks relieved and the waitress flees before I can ask for tomatoes or yoghurt. Hence why I tend to suffer from dehydration whenever I leave the UK for too long.

After careful consideration I think I can say I have had 5 really terrible hangovers in my life. Depending on how long you’ve know me you may recall the 3 day hangover I had in Tenerife, where I was left throwing up into the vegetable bin from our fridge after downing straight vodka on our first night. I didn’t even make it out to the bar. (Particularly proud of that one). Or perhaps you’ll recall New Year’s Eve of the millennium – also my 19^th birthday – when at exactly midnight I was stretchered into an ambulance and taken to hospital. I was eventually pushed out in a wheelchair, by my parents, in the early hours of the new century, after being given oxygen. If you work with me on Doctors you will probably think of the wrap party I organised, the one which resulted in me flashing my pants to the world as I was carried out of the bar. That’s the same party at which one of the runners projectile vomited onto the back of the bar’s general manager and then asked our executive producer if he was a taxi driver. The epitome of class, BBC parties.

So the common theme in these events is that (a) I’m a total lightweight and obviously my Irish blood is being dominated by my Jewish genes (did you know that Jews can’t handle their alcohol? Apparently it’s all to do with the gene ADH2*2 – true story) and (b) I always forget to eat. Which is admittedly surprising, given how much I can usually put away in a few hours. Anyway, my 5^th horrendous hangover occurred a couple of weeks ago in the states, when I stupidly tried to keep up with Irish Americans.

There’s nothing like walking sober into a room full of drunken Americans to make you feel like an Uptight English Bitch. This is what I’m blaming my subsequent enthusiasm for drinking games upon (have you tried ‘Flip Cup’? My advice: Don’t) and extreme enthusiasm for beverages I don’t usually touch (Quadruple Blueberry Stoli blended with blueberries, strawberries and lemonade? Hell yeah!) And thus, even though I switched to water at 10pm (obviously I had to ask someone else to order it for me – I made some new best friends at the bar of ‘Daddy’s’), I was still throwing up at 10am the next day. Nice. My sister found me lying on the floor of my bedroom, pathetically licking the salt off pretzel crisps and trying to keep down a glass of ginger ale at midday on Sunday.

And to think, some people my age are mothers.

You’ll be pleased to hear that the Snow Leopard bikini went down a storm. I think I managed to suitably embarrass all my family on the beach at some point. I was also told by my sister that my belly button piercing is “so 1996”, and my Nokia 2810 was named a “Zack Morris” phone by my American cousin: “is that the phone you use in Britain? Really?!!”

Consider yourself judged.

The Hull Times Police Log

For those unfamiliar with small town America, the local newspaper lists all the police reports for the last week. This is what people call 911 for in Hull:

Sunday 6/3: 1:02am Newport Rd. Officer reports that a vehicle is covered in some type of pudding substance. Owner notified and doesn’t want to do anything…. 8:55am Newport Rd. caller reports that someone put salad dressing all over her car. Officer on location for photos and reports ranch dressing and some other type of food item on the vehicle. Photos taken….

Tuesday 6/5: 4:34 pm. Nantasket Ave. Elderly female did not answer the door today for lunch. O/ Mahoney reports speaking to the resident, who states she was out for the day and everything is fine.

Sunday 8/ 19: 4:04pm X St. 13 year-old male, possible autistic, is trying to get into houses in the area of Beach Ave. Last seen headed towards the point.  O/ Mercer reports out with the youth. His parents are on the beach and he will be attempting to locate them. O/ Mercer reports that the youth is with an uncle and neighbour. He has just been running around the beach having fun….

Wish you worked for the Hull Police Dept?

Do Women think with their Vaginas?

Do Women Think with their Vaginas?

So my question for Thursday morning: If men think with their members (does that word make you go ewwww….?) do women think with their vaginas? And if so, what implications does that have for world peace?

Yeah, maybe no more coffee for me this morning…..

I’m in a questioning kind of mood, so let me throw a few more curve balls at you:

What would you do if it was your last day on earth? And, if your life depended on it, which Spice Girl would you shag? IF YOUR LIFE DEPENDED ON IT???

The Spice Girl question inevitably came up on Monday morning, following the Olympic closing ceremony (well, what else were you thinking when you watched Victoria in that taxi?). It was a mixed consensus in the office, with most opting for Geri. I picked Sporty: “No kidding Sarah. I could never have guessed that. You’d need mirrors on the ceiling for comparing each other’s biceps”. Although Mel B might be more fun. Definitely not Victoria. We decided the risk of snapping her – and lawsuit that would follow – just wouldn’t be worth it.

I have also asked the last day on earth question to several people. I was originally working on the theory that whatever your answer would be is in actual fact what you should be doing with your life, until I did a survey and was forced to conclude…. nah, maybe not. I was basing this supposition on my own answer: do body attack and have a shower. Honestly. I love body attack and my favourite thing to do (apart from eating and talking of course) is to take a shower. Just call me Super Clean Sarah. Anyway, the answers I received have included ‘go to the pub with my Dad’, ‘spend the day with my wife and children’ (yawn) and ‘get all the fittest women in the world, line them up, and then shag them all’.

I think the latter answer is my favourite. Surely the most honest at any rate.

So today is my last day at work before I go on holiday to Hull. Hull, America that is, not the teen pregnancy capital of the UK. I was packing last night and my sister came in just as I was opening my new swimsuits I had ordered from Topshop. Lesson One: when picking swimwear, NEVER ORDER ONLINE – SNOW LEOPARD PRINT BIKINIS MAY NOT LOOK AS GOOD IN REAL LIFE. So when she saw said leopard print bikini: ‘Oh my god Sarah, the eyes are exactly where your nipples are!! I am not sitting next to you on the beach wearing that’. I then had to reveal that I had, in fact, ordered the same bikini – but this time as a tiger print. At that point she totally freaked out. ‘What is wrong with you? You can shop in stores other than Topshop. That's the worst bikini I've ever seen. Why would you order two of them?!!’ Unfortunately, given that in less than 24 hours I will be on a Boston bound plane, it is far too late to think about returning them. I will be wearing tiger eyes on my breasts for the next 2 weeks and I refuse to be ashamed.

I’m starting my own mini revolution on the beach. I feel not unlike Rosa Parks.

On a separate note, I have decided that I am, in fact, more Roseanne Barr than Carrie Bradshaw. Following MarcoPierreWhite-gate (don’t ask), I ended up staying in with my sister, drinking beer in my pyjamas and watching Seinfeld. This may sound sad to you, but in fact was a fairly brilliant Friday night in. So, I have to conclude that whilst I like to think I am a vodka martini with a twist, I am in fact a six pack of Kronenbourg on sale for £4.99.

Whoop whoop.

So the Virgin Gay has been having a bit of trouble recently with the whole gay dating thing. He had a disastrous date last week with an Art Curator Vegan. He's the Rugby Playing Sonnova-Butcher. There's a match made in heaven. (That's not a new insult BTW - is Dad really is a butcher). Then the week before he was having a lovely date with a guy who then asked his friends, when he went to the bar, "Do you have any drugs? It's doesn't have to be ketamine. Heroin would do." Who said Cinderella can't go to the ball?

Overheard at the BBC

DIRECTOR: I like to think of actors as a pack of cards. You might be giving me an Ace but I’m asking for a King. So right now you’re a seven. Can you give me a nine?

Hands up who'd be an actor....

The World's Worst Dancer

The World’s Worst Dancer

So, turns out it’s actually quite difficult to be a personal trainer, who knew? Well, all the personal trainers in the world, obviously, but quite frankly this course has been a bit of a shock. I consider myself to be a young(ish) lady of reasonable intelligence  - let’s not forget I won the English prize for form D in year 8, pipping 31 other people to the post – but the sheer volume of learning involved: different muscle types, insertion and origin points, what bone is attached to what muscle… has quite frankly rendered me in tears of despair. I thought you just had to look good and say in a positive tone of voice ‘come on, four more’ when it looked like someone was going to give up? No? Well, someone mis-sold me on this one. And quite frankly I’m blaming Billy Blanks (Tae Bo anyone?)

I had a training day on Saturday for taking physical measurements, with this guy who can best be described as the Gil Grissom of personal training. You know how Grissom always links everything back to the evidence? Well this guy just kept telling us to link everything back to the ‘data’. I never knew that personal training was so scientific, I feel like I’m doing some kind of advanced anatomy/ physics degree. On the plus side he measured my body fat and told me I had 0% body fat on my stomach (thank you CX WORX). On the down side he asked me how old I was and then said ‘so Sarah’s doing pretty well for her age’. Cue 21 year old students looking smug.

‘Sarah’s doing pretty well for her age’. Right.  So I’m not 109, I’m 31… As I said before, I think this still pretty young, no? As my friend told me at the weekend, ‘Men mature, women age’.  So that’s lovely.

In other news, I’m sure I used to be a pretty good dancer. The word ‘amazing’ has even been used on occasion – although admittedly not since Shaggy was last in the charts. And the Vod -Bull was flowing... My sister and I went to a Body Jam last last night and I realised that my brain can no longer compute a simple 3-2-1-stop foot shuffle. It’s even more devastating when I'm surrounded by people who attend my other classes and therefore are accustomed to seeing me at the front, looking like a shining example of precision. Or at least not falling over every few minutes,  bearing an uncanny resemblance to Ricky Gervais attempting to do Beyonce. My sister loved it – ‘you get to look like a d*** and nobody cares!’ Well, I never said I didn’t care…. The class was also full of straight white boys who picked everything up immediately – and managed to look funky doing it.

Yeah. Hate them.

Is anyone else Olympic-ed out? I’ve enjoyed bits (Gymnast’s arms)…. It’s been very useful for motivating my classes (‘who wants a body like Jessica Ennis? Well in that case get lower!!’) but after 2 weeks I think I’ve got the gist. Quite annoyingly the TV in our office is right over and behind my head, and my colleagues insist on having the Olympics on all day. This means that (a) I have a constant running commentary of something I can’t see going on behind my head all day and (b) everyone who comes into the office asks me how we’re doing and who’s winning whatever’s on TV, and generally tries to engage me in conversation about the screen. Er, hello! You can clearly see I have my back to the screen, ergo I CAN’T SEE WHAT’S GOING ON!

Capiche?

Overheard at the BBC

Office Gay eating a jam doughnut (again).

ME: Oooh, what does that face say?

OFFICE SARCASTIC:  That the Paralympics are missing a mascot.

The D Word

The D Word

Right, so it’s Sunday night, and for some unfathomable reason my family is still watching The Olympic Opening Ceremony. Well, I say family, it’s mainly my Dad, with everyone else taking sporadic breaks to come and watch. I’m not exactly sure why we’re still watching it 48 hours after the rest of the world saw it, except that he watched it last night and claims that he can’t remember anything he saw. Which of course is worrying for many reasons, not least because how can you possibly forget the delirium-inducing sight of huge punk heads springing up and down to Pretty Vacant? My sister and I have just had to introduce him to pretty much every band beyond the Beatles, his excuse for his ignorance being ‘it’s not my era’. Okaaaaaaay… But you were (apparently) alive in the 70s? And also the 90s? (The Prodigy also proved to be a mystery). His comment on being told the rapper was called Dizzee Rascal – ‘Oh, that’s his name is it?’ Er, probably not his real name, no. Oh. My. God. Memories flooding back of when he corrected my sister’s pronunciation of Coolio in the mid-90s as ‘Hoolio’ (Julio). ‘How do you spell it?’ ‘C.O.O.L.I.O.’ ‘Oh right. Yes you’re quite right. Coolio.’ (We often discuss gangsta rappers in my household, that’s just how the Shortt family roll).

So yes it was amazing blah blah blah, but can we have some real news now? I opened the Sunday Times today and think I had to skip to about page 18 to read something that wasn’t Olympic related. Even my Mum, surprisingly racist towards the British for someone who has lived here for over 30 years, enjoyed the show. Usually her only concession towards England is that she enjoys the ‘Today’ programme - and would miss John Humphreys if she returned to the states - but I actually found her weeping on the sofa as she watched the opening ceremony, muttering between sobs ‘I thought it was going to be a wash-out, but it’s amazing!’ Yeah yeah, Danny Boyle is a Directing God.

But I still don’t find Mr Bean all that funny.

In other news, apparently I am now at an age which provokes a response of ‘Oh Wow’. I was chatting to a PT at the gym and he asked how old I was. When I replied 31 he looked gratifyingly surprised and said, ‘Oh wow. You do not look that age at all’. I wanted to ask if he has misheard and thought I said 41? Er, surely 31 is still a relatively young, down-with-the-kids, could-still-be-at-uni-albeit-as-a-mature-student age?! Well, wonder no more my friends, the 15 year old PT has spoken and declared me Officially Old. *Sob*. To add insult to injury, one of the Fat Security Men at my work asked me if my ‘Forever Young’ t-shirt was ‘Hopeful?’

Case closed. I am a relic.

You will be pleased to hear that on Thursday I managed to prevent the F word being broadcast on (Soap) award-winning daytime TV, and thus have no doubt prevented the cancellation of our show and in fact the collapse the of the entire British Broadcasting Corporation. I arrived into work on Thursday morning to be greeted by an email from the company who write our subtitles: apparently they had noticed that the Black Eyed Peas song ‘My Humps’, which we had used in the episode due to be broadcast that day, did not contain the line ‘I drive these brothers crazy’ but in fact clearly said ‘I drive these fuckers crazy’. I duly went in to relate the good news to the producer, who turned white and said ‘WHAT?!!’ We listened to the line about 20 times, decided that we couldn’t actually tell what it said but we had better change it just in case, and then realised that the tape was in London. Brilliant. Anyway, the rest of the story is pretty dull but all you need to know is that by some wizardly of post-production they managed to replace the offending line with a musical overlap, and I got inducted into making a ‘circuit booking’ – whatever the hell that is – where someone they ‘play the tape down the line’ to London. To make a great situation better, the switchboard at the relevant company in London couldn’t transfer me directly to anyone, and Kristal, the only person I managed to speak to directly, was on her first day - poor lamb - and seemingly failed the grasp the concept that we were broadcasting the episode in 3 hour’s time. Anyway, the replacement edit was broadcast and no doubt millions of letters of complaint avoided. Yep, that’s why they pay me the big bucks.

Oh no. Hang on a minute. They don’t.

Overheard at the BBC

SCRIPT EDITOR: Ganache is a funny word isn’t it?

SCRIPT EDITOR: Isn’t that Denis the Menace’s dog?

Yep. These are the people who make the magic happen, people.

The Cycle of Learning

The Cycle of Learning

How has your Friday the 13^th been so far? My sister’s has been about as disastrous as it gets. First of all she woke up with a One Direction song playing endlessly in her head (‘Baby you light up my life like nobody else etc.’) and then she discovered that she was sharing her morning shower with a gigantic spider. I like to think that the moment she saw said spider was a bit like that scene in Arachnophobia when the spider jumps on the girl’s head. Although, let’s be honest, the spider was probably more upset than she was to find a blonde giant in his new hotel. And now she’s had to go and teach a class of Italian teenagers how to speak English. It’s their last day of summer school, they don’t care, and apparently there’s already a web of complicated love triangles between The Three Eduardo’s. I like to think of them as not being unlike The Three Musketeers, but with Italian accents, raging hormones and a packet of parma ham in their backpack.

I love hearing her stories about her kids at the summer school. Apparently the Italians never shut up. The Chinese are very studious but they hate playing games. The Greeks are all there to learn. She has been playing the ‘yes/no game’ with them, where they are not allowed to reply yes or no to a question. Question (Destiny’s Child): Did I need to explain that? What does it say about me (or YOU) that I did? Anyway, moving on…. Apparently they were asking the boys, ‘Is your boyfriend Justin Bieber?’ Cue panicked looking Italian 14 year old, desperately wracking his brains for an answer, eventually coming up with, ‘Maybe?’ At which point all the kids repeat ‘maybe, ha ha!’ and fall about laughing. Do you feel old when I tell you that none of the kids know who Britney Spears is? Alana said, ‘come on, ‘Toxic’?’ Nope.  Nothing.  Zilch. And here I was thinking that I was relatively on trend having ‘Circus’ on my i-pod. Relative, that is, to the rest of my playlist. (Neil Diamond and Joan Baez anyone?)

In other news, my new American passport has finally arrived, yay! They haven’t rejected me! I have somehow slipped under the Yankee net once again. It was taking so long to come that I was starting to fear they would say ‘not this time’ on the grounds of being a Bad American i.e. I’ve never actually tasted pumpkin pie and we have never had a Thanksgiving meal in my house. However, I do feel I have just the requisite amount of WHOOP WHOOP! attitude, self-belief, outlandish size teeth and partiality to trans-fats to keep me in dual citizenship for the next ten years (when my current passport expires and I’ll be 41. Oh God.) It’s a relief since it was such a bloody nightmare getting my photo done. For American passports you can’t just have a regular photo booth picture done. Oh no. It has to be done in colour, by a specialist photographer, with ridiculously specific details on mm distance eyes from mouth etc. It’s a bit like measuring the shorts of a flea when it comes to how much white background you can have from the edges. And then the dude that took my picture kept complaining that my hair was ‘too fluffy’ and I needed to smooth it down more. Well, sorry mister, I have frizzy hair, it’s called GENES!! I already had about 500 Kirby grips in my hair, but he kept frowning at every picture he took, muttering ‘no, no good, too fluffy, America is the strictest you know’. Eventually, obviously despairing of my hair’s refusal to stay down, he came over and smoothed it all down for me himself, rearranging all my grips for me.

That was fun.

 This weekend is the last of the Les Mills launches I am required to do THANK GOD. Don’t get me wrong, I obviously love teaching and the launches are really fun, but it is also incredibly stressful. Every three months we (instructors) get sent new choreography to learn, and you have 3-4 weeks to get your head around what might be 1 to 9 routines to learn – dependent on how many programmes you teach. The cycles goes like this: Excitement about new releases – deciding which tracks are your favourite etc. Enthusing to all your members about how much you love the new attack. Listening to the music endlessly – in your car, at home, at work etc. Practising anywhere you can (for me, this means standing outside our offices with a stick at lunchtimes practising pump, getting weird looks from the crew if they happen to be filming nearby). Then, as the launch date approaches, mild panic starts to set in and you wonder how you are possibly going to learn 8 tracks by 5pm tomorrow. You swing between panicking about the choreography, and feeling totally fed up. You decide that you never want to learn anything else in your life again, EVER. At the 11^th hour you have to get real: the cool down is going to be freestyle. 10 minutes before the launch you have no idea whether it’s a double step touch or a squat tap, or a 2/2 or 3/1. The launch starts. Everyone else seems to know more than you. Without fail you get something wrong – never the part of the choreo you were worried about though. The launch finishes. You feel a massive sense of relief. Cue champagne, relaxed shoulders, sleep, excited messages on Facebook.

Then you realise there’s only 2 months left before it all starts again.

OVERHEARD AT THE GYM

Fitness Instructor: I only make £6 an hour on the gym floor. Rubbish. I used to make more than that selling drugs.

The Jews and the Sluts

THE JEWS AND THE SLUTS

Sometimes it’s weird working on a TV show. Like yesterday, where I got asked to check the ladies’ toilets were empty and then act as lookout so a director and first AD could recce them for filming. Is that normal? And then today where we realised that in TV Land we are already thinking about Bonfire Night and Christmas. When you work on a Soap, New Year’s Eve comes round way quicker than you had anticipated.

And then sometimes actors ask you to pronounce words and you inadvertently insult them.

One of our cast suddenly appeared at my elbow a few days and, shoving a script under my nose, pointed at the word ‘brusque’ and asked ‘is that brisk?’ I was kind of caught off guard and said, ‘er, no, it’s brusque’. ‘It’s not brisk then?’ ‘No….’ He was looking a bit unsure and I felt obliged to say something intelligent, and thus carried on knowledgably, ‘it means….’ At which point he looked at me like I was a patronising bitch and said ‘I KNOW WHAT IT MEANS, but do you pronounce it brisk?’

There was clearly not going to be a happy ending to this, so I just said I didn’t know. ‘OK. Well I’m going to go with short then’. Fine. I was feeling quite ashamed about being rude to a famous (ish) actor, so I related the story to the Office Blonde, and said how embarrassed I was – of course he would know what it meant. Her response? ‘What does brusque mean?’

SEE? NOT A GIVEN!

So now I had insulted two people.

The actor re-appeared in the office later on, and just shouted ‘SHORT!’ at me across the room. Which of course then opened a whole new can of confusion, surname speaking…. So now I’m avoiding all actors. It’s so much easier that way.

However, to just completely renege on the statement above, I’ve just had a conversation with the Office Bow Tie concerning whether All Actors Are Sluts? This was going to be an amusing little nugget of a paragraph on the dubious morals of artistes and their complete lack of fidelity when it comes to wrap parties/ the Soap Awards/ Thursday nights out at The Plough. However, he very sensitively pointed out that actors are complex, flawed, beautiful human beings, who can’t be reduced to a single stereotype. And was I talking about sluts in the sexual sense of the word, or in terms of agents and castings, or in a slovenly sense…. And suddenly my amusing little anecdote has been lost somewhere under the weight of the complex human beings and of course non-actors can be sexually promiscous liars too and quite frankly I think we should just call the whole thing off.

Tonight we are having our one and only BBQ of the year and, true to British summertime, we have had thunder and lightning and floods on the main road outside our office. We were starting to panic slightly but Warwick the Butcher has assured us that the spit roast is already in progress and the pig is getting ready to feed Letherbridge. On the subject of this, our party coincides with the leaving do for an actress. The pig roast had already been booked before anyone realised that she is, in fact, a Jewish vegetarian.   

So it’s probably not the ideal send off - especially by an organisation as PC as the BBC, but quite frankly we all wanted a pork bap.  My colleague contacted the butcher to ask if the pig was kosher, to which he replied ‘Yes it’s all paid for and above board, LOL’. What a kidder!

On a more orthodox note, we have managed to source a copy of ‘Authentic Israel’ from the post production library, and we will be playing 'Hava Nagila' and 'Dreidel Dreidel' intermittently throughout the night. I feel that my ancestors would be proud.

The (Fitness) Cult of Celebrity

The (Fitness) Cult of Celebrity

So you may be thinking that there really is very little that would be comparable between The British Soap Awards and a Les Mills instructor workshop. In this, my friends, you would be sadly mistaken. When you start to consider the lashings of fake tan and the waxed shiny legs, it really becomes quite difficult to distinguish between the two.

And that’s just the men.

I attended the Bristol workshop for the Les Mills new releases last weekend. For the uninitiated, this is when instructors get to try out all the new routines that we will be inflicting upon our members for the next 3 months. My friend, who had never been to a workshop before, commented, ‘I feel a bit like I’m entering a cult’ as we entered the room. There is a sense of cult-like behaviour: from everyone wearing the same body combat shorts, to the identical Maori tattoos and devotion to one cause, there is something very single minded about the energy in the room. Which I do quite like – obviously I subscribe to ‘the cause’ too – but I am also aware of the slight weirdness of the situation. I couldn’t help thinking what my sarcastic colleagues at the BBC would say if they could see 500 instructors standing in a darkened room with disco lights spinning, all shouting ‘kiah!’ as they kick an imaginary opponent (or the annoying keeno wearing a crop top over her boob job who’s just pushed her way to stand one millimetre in front of you).

What is surprising, is the various body shapes and personality types you encounter at the workshops. You might think you would be surrounded by the ‘body beautiful’ – an intimidating array of strong fit bodies. Well, there definitely are some amazingly toned people at these events, but there are also a scary number of those who, quite frankly, don’t look like they even know where the gym is. And these are all instructors, people. Just like The Soap Awards, the competitive energy in the room is overwhelming. I don’t think I’ve felt so scrutinised and judged since I lived in Leeds and used to go the gay bar Fibre, which was full of mirrors – to make opining on others even more accessible. Even being surveyed by a table of pursed lip Queens doesn’t come close to the intimidation factor of stepping into a room of instructors to compare quad size.

Another similarity to the Soaps is the sense of celebrity in the room i.e. the presenters. Even if you’ve not met them before, you will recognise the trainers from other workshops, or the training DVD’s. Just like at the Soaps, you end up trying to pretend not to be in awe of the famous person standing next to you in the toilets. Is it wrong that I was far more excited about washing my hands next to Susan Renata than I ever was walking past Ken Barlow on the cobbles? The reverence given to the presenters is definitely tantamount to the red carpet at the Soaps. They might not be walking to a television studio surrounded by screaming fans, but we’re all going to cheer everything they say on stage. Even when, in the case of a body pump instructor, it’s actually quite offensive. One presenter from New Zealand stood on stage and commented, ‘I was last in the UK in 1996, launching body pump, and there were a lot of soft flabby bodies out there (instructors). I’d just like to say, you’re all looking a lot better, good job’ Weirdly, everyone cheered. Er, he’s insulting us guys! It might be an insult disguised as a compliment, but it’s still fairly mean, isn’t it?!

The last thing I’d like to comment on is how you can tell, just by looking at people, what class they teach. Yes yes, most instructors teach a lot of different programmes, but they can also sense what class in particular they are affiliated to. All the aggressive, slightly angry looking girls teach body combat. The happy people with ridiculously toned legs teach body attack. Anyone eating seeds/ organic yoghurt definitely teaches balance, and you can spot the body pump men by the slightly mechanical way they move. Anyone wearing leggings teaches jam.

At least, you hope they do.

A friend of mine, who is not an instructor *DISCLAIMER* recently personified all the programmes for me in the following way:

Body Pump – Raoul Moat. This might sound slightly extreme, but she said she feels like it is a mean, threatening programme, who is going to shoot you if you don’t lift the weight it says.

Body Attack – the jock in the changing room who is thwacking you with a wet towel, daring you to go harder and more energetic.

Body Combat – Beyonce. Because it’s on your side.

That was as far as we got. Watch this space for balance and vive.

Overheard at the BBC

Office Gay: ‘You’re always moody’

Me: ‘It’s just because I’m on’

OG: ‘That’s such a horrible expression. ‘On’. ‘

Me: ‘What would you prefer me to say? Surfing the crimson wave? Got the painters and decorators in?’

OG: ‘How about evacuating copious amounts of blood from your c***?’

Eurgh.

Mr Jobsworth

Mr Jobsworth

So it’s unlike me to moan, but so far today has been…. difficult. My eyelashes didn’t curl properly *DISASTER NUMBER ONE* and then when I applied my mascara it came out clumpy so my eyes now look like little spider legs. Not in a cute way you understand - more Bette Davis in ‘Whatever Happened to Baby Jane’. Then I lost my body attack mix CD I need for tonight (somewhere on my floor no doubt – disintegrating under all my sweaty gym gear)…. I’m telling you, those Thalidomide survivors have nothing on me.

JOKE! Calm down, it’s Friday. Although I do have some knowledge of what it’s like to have unusually short levers.

Anyway, I have had a brush this week with the man I like to call Mr Jobsworth. I feel that I have had several encounters with Mr Jobsworth in my working career. He comes disguised in many different forms – not unlike Satan. There was my manager at the country club in New York, James - or as we liked to call him “Beach Club JAMES SPEAKING!!”  - who informed us that ‘if there’s time to lean, there’s time to clean’, and made me line up all the sachets of tomato ketchup in perfect order. That was a worthwhile job – 30 minutes of painstaking precision ruined instantly by some American brat unaware of the British graft that had gone into arranging said ketchup.

And then I had to line them up all over again.

Then there was my café manager in Cairns, who warned me, “don’t be Jewish with the ice” when making drinks. There was the retail manager who insisted we ask everyone about saving 10% off by opening a store card – which resulted in my asking a customer if she would like to make a saving on a £2.70 pair of pants. She stared at me incredulously and then said “So, do I want to save 27 pence?”… The production co-ordinator who made me re-do the unit list about a thousand times until everything was millimetre perfect, and told me that I couldn’t really justify taking a 20 minute break in a twelve hour day. As she pointed out to me, quite reasonably I’m sure you’ll agree, “I’ve never taken a lunch break the entire time I’ve worked in this industry”. Well, you’re the idiot who’s gained about 3 stone by never leaving your desk then aren’t you? Fat Bitch. Not that I’m fattist. Or bitter. Oh who am I kidding? I am Bitter Fattist Extroadinaire.

It’s my mother’s fault.

So the present Mr Jobsworth is the co-ordinator at one of the gyms I teach at, and his beef this week has been the studio microphone. Apparently it went missing after my class on Sunday, resulting in an antagonistic phone call to me on Monday that went something like this “Hi Sarah, so I’m looking for the head mic…” I explained that I had left it for the next instructor to use – as I have been doing for the last 2 years. “Riiiiiiiight….. well…… guess we better hope it turns up……” Or you’ll shoot me? I then had a phone call informing me there was to be a FULL staff meeting, attendance is COMPULSORY, concerning new procedure regarding the head mic. Apparently I (a) must ensure I only take one mic up to the studio (despite the fact that, inevitably, the microphone I choose will be the one that doesn’t work) (b) If I’m passing it to the next instructor I MUST PHYSICALLY PUT IT IN THEIR HAND and (c) if it does go missing, I will be teaching classes for free to cover the £400 cost of said microphone. This might have all carried a bit more weight had it not been for the fact that the co-ordinator frequently leaves the door to the reception ajar – thus allowing anyone who wanted to steal a microphone (why?) to easily reach in and take it.

In fact the door was ajar even as he was delivering these procedural guidelines to me.

Overheard at the BBC

“I need a break. I’ve been working flat out for twenty minutes”.

That is all. Enjoy your 4 day weekend. We at the beeb are still working. Nope, not even the Queen’s Jubilee can halt the unstoppable juggernaut that is award winning (not this year though) daytime TV. As my friend used to tell me when I was near suicidal working in Manchester “remember – you work on the Nation’s Best Loved Soap”.

Yay!

Lost in Translation

Lost in Translation

So we were debating the various complexities of an all-white choir putting on a production of the African-American opera Porgy and Bess (I am now in my 30s and these are the conversations I have on a Saturday night), when my friend suddenly paused, narrowed her eyes and said suspiciously, ‘wait a minute, is this going to go in your blog?’

Well, quite patently, yes…. I have discovered that, since I’ve started writing a regular blog, people seem to be a lot more careful what they say around me. Which is not going to make for entertaining writing at all. Come on people, give me the juice! Or I’m going to have to start making friends with unsuspecting strangers in order to source my material. Which lead me to wonder (‘I couldn’t help but wonder….’) what happens to the friends of people who are actual writers? Do they simply accept that most of their lives are somehow going to end up in their mate’s next novel? There is something of the parasite feeding off the host… I remember reading an article about an author in which he was accused of using other people’s misery for his own gains – and being very dispassionate about, for example, a friend’s suicide. However, so far nobody has started avoiding me - or de-friended me on Facebook (the ultimate friendship cut off) - so until I am told otherwise, I will continue to plunder my acquaintances for material.

If that’s OK with you.

I have also been told that I need to issue an apology to the boy in my office who I accused of being A Gay last week. Apparently, he’s as hetero as they come. This is despite the fact, so far that this morning, he has showed me his shiny new white trainers (Olympic edition Adidas) and was most recently sighted hanging around the cake shelf, debating the various merits of chocolate cake VS  victoria sponge with The Confirmed Office Gay. Yes indeedy, the testosterone is flying around our office. Ooh it’s like the changing rooms after a Man City match. Speaking of which, The Confirmed Office Gay has just played 'Hot Stuff' at full volume in tribute to Donna Summer.

 Just when I thought it couldn't get any more macho in here.

In other news, my sister has been sharing the cultural differences between England and Spain with me. She is teaching English in Barcelona, and one of the exercises she set her students was to explain what really gets on their nerves. Apparently the most popular complaint was ‘I hate it when I get in the elevator and people don’t say hello to me’. WTF? In the UK, surely we would think someone was chatting us up/ mentally unhinged/ about to mug us/ plain weird if they spoke to us in the lift. HELLO, WE DON’T SAY HELLO UNTIL WE HAVE BEEN INTRODUCED! BY A MUTUAL ACQUAINTANCE! AND THEN WE STILL MIGHT PRETEND WE DON’T KNOW YOU FOR SEVERAL WEEKS!

This also brought to mind the language barrier she faced when she was living in Thailand. I recall her telling me about the Thai women in Dunkin Donuts who called her a silly bitch (in Thai) when she asked for more milk in her coffee – unaware that she could understand them. And then there was the time that her boyfriend came home all upset because all the women thought he looked really old. Apparently as he walked down the street they were shouting ‘sixty, sixty’ at him. This later emerged to, in fact, be ‘sexy, sexy’ – in an Asian accent. It’s amazing the differences a couple of letters make.

Speaking of lost in translation, I was listening to ‘Let me clear my throat’ this morning, and it took me a good few minutes to recall that these were the words, and not ‘Let me check my coat’. Further to this train of thought, I have only recently discovered that Lady Gaga’s ‘Edge of Worry’ is in fact ‘Edge of Glory’, and Will Young’s song ‘Jealousy’ is not ‘Jersey’. For ages I was singing ‘And it feels like Jersey/ And it feels like I can breathe’. I thought he was extolling the virtues of the clean fresh air on the beautiful island of Jersey. Yeah - not so much.

That is all. I have also been signed up to e-harmony by my Cackling Female Friends, but I need to steel my nerves before I am ready to write about that particular ignominy.

The Hobby

The Hobby

I don’t want to end up old and alone. I know that sounds terribly pathetic/ non-feminist/ needy/ bordering on desperate, but it’s true. Isn’t that true for everybody? Nobody really wants to think that they’ll be spending the evening of their lives sat in Drucker’s with a stale scone for company. And nobody to share the apricot jelly with.

So, in the vein of finding my Jack/ reassuring myself that I’d rather be alone, I have asked some of my friends to set me up with somebody suitable. And not just someone that will be comedy value for them (although I suppose it would give me something to write about). I have high hopes. And that’s despite my experience of Alison’s husband’s friends to date (pointing out when I’m exposing myself in that ill-advised Vicky Martin top with the doily-type pattern down the front/ telling me I could have bought 3 pints with the amount I’d just spent on a Grey Goose martini. Yeah. And…?) Anyway, I’ve given up on men at BBC. And at the gym. The boys in my office spent this morning arguing over who was entitled to the last lemon meringue Krispy Kreme. Only one of them was gay.

(Allegedly).

And my most recent experience of Virgin Men was when one of the sales team examined a photograph of a gorgeous Olympic athlete in a sports magazine and commented. “She’s got no batty. Like an Ikea flatpack. I can’t work with that.” She’d be devastated, I’m sure.

In other non-panicking-about-impending- lonely-retirement news, I have also been thinking about hobbies. This was brought on by an evening jaunt around the Edgbaston reservoir, watching the various rower-types on the water. Every time I walk past the Edgbaston rowing club I resolve that I will join some kind of water-based sport in the summer – and become one of those happy outdoorsy type people sailing gaily across the lake. As soon as I get home I promptly forget this resolution - until the next walk, when I think about it again. And then forget. And so the cycle continues. I’d say it’s coming up to 10 years now that I have been considering my boating career. God, I could have entered the Olympics by now.

But I digress. My friend pointed out that, really, we weren’t like them – they were too “posh and row-ey”. Apparently, we’re common and un-row-ey. But it made me think about starting a new hobby. Unfortunately my track record with hobbies hasn’t been too great: there was the book club I started, with the book that I chose and made everyone buy. Within one chapter I decided that the book was far too dull for me to waste any more time on, and so Meeting One turned into brunch with wine, minus discussion of books. And then everyone lost interest.

 Then there was the salsa class I joined in Manchester, when I was living with Boring Simon. Simon was in IT Recruitment which, as my colleague pointed put at the time, was like ‘Boring squared’.  Boring Simon had somehow managed to acquire Fun Chinese Girlfriend, Ting Ting, whose enthusiasm for salsa persuaded me to attend a class with her. It wasn’t until 20 minutes in, when I was wondering how the hell everyone knew all the moves - and could execute them so quickly - that I realised that Ting Ting had tricked me into entering the Advanced class, the Asian bitch. So she merrily cha cha cha-ed away whilst I stepped on people’s feet and pirouetted the wrong way. Then I got Hand Raped by some random Italian guy when we had to partner up – who kept stroking my thumb in a forceful way - and all in all it was just a thoroughly unpleasant experience.

But I do feel like I have tried to be a joiner several times over the years. In the name of getting outside of my comfort zone I spent an evening at a 3 hour Experimental Dance class in a warehouse in Digbeth. The evening culminated in us having to spell out the letters of our name, using different parts of our body. And join this up into a dance. And then perform it in front of 2 dance instructors and the remainder of the class. That was amazing. There was the writing MA that I started, but then gave up on when I realised that spending 3 hours every Wednesday listening to other people read their writing in a Dramatic Voice was beginning to make me want to kill myself.

So… I’ve still not signed up for the rowing club. I’m guessing that, along with my yearly resolution to ‘write more’ and ‘save more’, I should just accept that I’m not really a joining kind of girl. I’m quite happy standing at the front of the gym, telling everyone else what to do. Control freak? I just like to think of myself as Girl Who Knows Her Own Mind.

Post Soaps

Post-Soaps

I think that my experience of the British Soap Awards 2012 can be summarised by the following:

Highlight of the night – I discovered that Hold Ups, as opposed to tights, are much more comfortable.

And this is in no way a reference to sexual ‘escapades’ – if that’s what you’re thinking (Joe). It is simply that this was the main enjoyment of the night. Yes: the glamour of showbiz.

Now I don’t mean to sound ungrateful – I realise that I am very privileged to be allowed to attend the Soaps at all, and it is quite exciting when you first realise that you’re in the same room as the cast of Emmerdale etc. But the ceremony is boring. And long. And hot. And once you realise that Doctors was going to win exactly nothing – and the hours we had spent collating clips/ the co-ordinators had invested sorting trains and hotels -  had been a total waste of time, you get a bit fed up of clapping for Eastenders.

Then there’s the after-party – which generally consists of too much free alcohol, and nowhere near enough food. That might sound a horribly dull indictment, but I am an ATHLETE for god’s sake ;) and thus need to be fed every 3 hours. At the very least. There were a lot of Soap Stars standing around looking, frankly, pretty bored. Main topics of discussion: which Hollyoaks girl they’d like to shag; which club they must be photographed at later on.

 I bumped into a writer, D, from a Soap I worked in a few years ago. Who didn’t remember me at all. Always gratifying from someone you worked with for a year. Conversation went like this:

Me: D!

D: Er…. Hi….

Me: Do you remember me, I used to work with you on Soap X....

D: (Pause) Lily?!!

Me: No…. Sarah…. I was the researcher…

D: You’ve just started?

Me: No.

D: You’ve just finished?

Me: No (at this stage starting to lose the will to live).

D: You finished a long time ago.

Me: (Obviously) Yes.

D: Sarah…. Sarah…. Sarah Shortt! I do remember. Well you never wore those clothes to the office. And I meet so many new people darling. You see, this is why I don’t hang out with white people any more.

Cause you see I never meet any new people. In fact I’ve not met a single new person since I left the show – that’s how I can remember D. Plus I have an amazing ability to recognise people even when they’re wearing different clothes. I can even differentiate between people of other ethnic origins.

 I think I may be a walking miracle.

So that did put me in a grumpy mood somewhat, and he then accused me of losing my sense of humour. Well, being completely blanked by someone you worked with for a year can do that to you.

It should be pointed out that this writer is, also, white.

Anyway…. Aside from that little self-confidence booster…. I got papped falling out of a taxi outside Café Du Paris, exposing my pants, brilliant. Luckily I’m not famous so I imagine they deleted that picture straight away…. Managed to get in free by attaching myself to Ryan Thomas’ entourage, but tragically - because I had to make an emergency trip to the ladies’ room - managed to get separated from all my friends and thus wasn’t allowed into the VIP area. I spent a good 15 minutes attempting to persuade the evil bouncer to let me in, followed by a short tour of the dance floor by myself, followed by a jubilant 20 seconds when I thought I had managed to fox the bouncer by sneaking past when he wasn’t looking - ‘Aha!’ I thought, ‘I’m in! Screw you, Nazi Bouncer of Doom!’ – then sadly realised that, in my inebriated state, I had mistaken an ice bucket for a VIP barrier. And, in fact, was still in the land of the Common People.

The night finished in the hotel bar, where I discovered that the actor who played the racist in Doctors was, in actual fact, not a racist at all but A Very Nice Bloke. I managed not to throw up (hurrah), or end up with man juice on my Silver Princess Shoes, but didn’t quite reach the pinnacle of celebrity achieved 2009 when I met Biff from Saxon. You know. Who ‘This is Spinal Tap’ was based on. He’s mega famous and he texted me from Iceland a few weeks later. Yep, that’s just how the Shorttmeister rolls.

Re: the above (being blanked by people who really should remember you) - I think the insult of the night came from our illustrious leader at the beeb. He told my gorgeous Irish friend that, all dolled up, she reminded him of ‘My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding’. Just what every girl dreams of hearing when she’s spent an afternoon beautifying herself.

Apparently Matt Le Blanc was staying at the same hotel. Well, he missed out.