Rosamundi’s ramblings

I need a new phone. My current one, apparently, makes me sound like I’ve fallen down a well and am requesting the urgent assistance of Lassie.

So I popped onto the Nokia site (I like Nokias).

They do not appear to do any phones that just let you make and receive phone calls and send and receive text messages.

Apparently I also have to have something that will take photos, play music and do all sorts of other things which I neither understand nor need.

They’re all too complicated and bright and shiny (and pink) and Carphone Warehouse don’t sell reconditioned phones any more. Woe is me. Woe, I tell you. Woe.

Apparently, my MP “didn’t feel safe” coming back to West Ham after late night sittings in the House.

So you’ll leave your constituents to fight off the muggers as best they can, will you, Lyn? You remember your constituents, don’t you? Those people who voted for you because they believed your bright promises about caring for the area, and fighting to get West Ham designated an Inner London borough because of the benefits it would bring (whatever happened to that, by the way? Seems to have dropped off your radar, for some reason. Couldn’t be because you discovered that you’d no longer be eligible for Second Homes Allowance if West Ham’s designation was changed, could it? Surely not), and how crime and education would be top of your priority list…

I suppose I should be grateful that (a) she rented the flat and (b) she shared it with another MP, and (c) we don’t appear to have been subsidising her bath plugs and moat cleaning, but surely to God it’s not beyond the Fees Office to have a couple of cab accounts for the use of MPs after late night sittings?

I live in the West Ham constituency. Which is in London, and is, in fact, blessed with a Tube station. Several of them, which is jolly handy in case of signal failure and fire and flood and wasps* and stuff. And, according to those lovely people at Transport for London, from West Ham Tube station to Westminster is all of twenty two minutes.

Minutes, not hours or days.

And you don’t even have to change lines.

So why, I ask, in the tones of pained dismay I seem to be adopting so often these days, has my MP seen fit to claim fifteen thousand, eight hundred and eighty nine pounds in Second Home Allowance in 2007-2008? And food. Why in the name of all that’s Holy are you claiming for food? Everyone else has to pay for food out of their salary, why are you somehow exempt from this?

I can’t help but think that even at Transport for London’s “let’s gouge the commuters for all they’re worth and then go on strike and make the buggers walk anyway,” prices, an annual season ticket and the odd black cab after late night sittings would have been cheaper.

She’ll probably come back with some utter tripe about “West Ham is classed as an outer London constituency, so the rules say I can.” To which my response will be a brisk “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.” Especially when you are paid approximately three times as much (plus expenses) as your average constituent.

Believe me, if the second party round here wasn’t Gorgeous George’s trainwreck, I’d be voting for them in heartbeat.

Thou shalt not grind down the widow and the orphan, or oppress the worker, Lyn, it’s a sin that cries to Heaven for vengeance.

*I once got to my local tube station only to be told that it was closed due to wasps. Makes a change, I suppose.

A book entitled “Necropolis: London and its dead” earns you some very funny looks when you’re reading it whilst sat on the Tube.

It is interesting, mind.

Oozing, corpse gas, body-snatching, cholera, plague, and gin. What’s not to like?

(I might have lied about the gin).

When I walked into the polling booth on Thursday, I has a voting paper that was nearly three foot long, it was ridiculous.

Incidentally, UKIP, if you were worried about people not voting for you because they couldn’t find your name on the paper, you might want to think about getting some new supporters. Ones that don’t have to be followed around by someone murmuring “breathe in, breathe out,” in their ear lest they forget what to do.

I don’t like voting from a position of ignorance. I have, in the past, wasted acres of paper and gallons of ink printing out the manifestos of all the parties standing in my constituency in a general election, and then wasted hours of my life reading the wretched things. OK, in one case I then decided not to vote for someone because they couldn’t use “less” or “fewer” correctly, but then I never claimed to be normal. And how can I take your education policies seriously if you wantonly abuse poor innocent apostrophes?

So why, out of umpty-squillion candidates, did I only have three election leaflets through the door?

I can understand not being doorstepped, although I would just like to point out that it was one frozen fish, once, and I have been very careful not to answer the door with dead marine creatures in my hand ever since, but how can I vote for you if I don’t know what you stand for?

All those candidates, MPs and Euro MPs who are currently wringing their hands over the BNP now having two Euro MPs, excuse me, but where the hell were you when I was trying to decide who to vote for? The BNP put a leaflet through my door. I tore it into teeny pieces and put it in the recycling, but even so, out of all these candidates:

Conservative
Labour
Liberal Democrats
Green Party
UK Independence Party
British National Party
Christian Party-Christian Peoples Alliance
Independent - Jan Jananayagam
English Democrat
No2EU
Socialist Labour Party
Libertas
Jury Team
Independent - Steven Cheung
Socialist Party of Great Britain
Yes 2 Europe
Independent - Sohale Rahman
Independent - Gene Alcantara
Independent - Haroon Saad

I had information for the three parties marked in bold, and that is pathetic. If you want me to vote for you, you have to tell me why I should vote for you. And use apostrophes properly, but that’s just me…

If we are to stop the BNP and their ilk, we need more than “don’t vote BNP because they’re evil,” because, true as it is, we need to offer a viable alternative as well.

Oh, and as for a turnout of 1,751,026 from an electorate of 5,257,624, words fail me. Thirty three percent?!? That is abysmal, and if I hear a single word about who got in out of anyone who didn’t vote, I will slap you silly. Turning out is counted, even if you only turn out in order to write “sod the lot of you” across the ballot paper. Sitting on your bum in front of Big Brother? Not so much. If you don’t vote, you can’t moan.

I have no idea if this will achieve anything, but anyway:

Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons have won seats in the European Parliament - but they do not represent Britain.

Sign our petition and help show what Britain thinks of the BNP - we’ll be handing our petition to the European Parliament on the day Griffin and Brons take their seat. Join the campaign, upload a photo of yourself holding a sign saying “Not in my name” and then share this petition with your friends. Let’s send a deafening message of defiance: NOT IN OUR NAME.

You can sign the petition here.

Make sure Nick Griffin* isn’t about to be interviewed on Radio 4 as you start cleaning your teeth, since drowning in mouthwash is a particularly unpleasant way to go.

The trouble with thugs-in-suits is that they sound perfectly pleasant, and then your brain catches up with your ears, and you draw a deep, outraged breath, preparatory to shouting at the radio**.

Only you have 15ml of Aquafresh Clear Mint mouthwash in your mouth at the time.

15ml of Aquafresh Clear Mint mouthwash making abrupt and unplanned contact with your lungs results in you coughing and choking and rolling round on the bathroom floor trying not to die for about five minutes, and oh but it burns, my precioussssss, it burns, since it’s not designed to be used as a sinus rinse.

Ow.

*Well-known thug-in-a-suit.

**Is it just me that does this?

Yeah, yeah, I know, when has that ever stopped me before?

Would you like some photos instead? If not, tough. (If you click through on any of the photos, that will bring you to the whole set).

Rosadaddy, who is all sorts of aces, drove me to Abbotsbury purely so I could take photos of cygnets and go “squee” a lot.

This little chap was the perfect size to fit in my camera bag, but I womanfully resisted.

This poppy is in my parents’ garden:

I went on a Dorset inter-Church Events walk along a bit of the south coast path near Portland.

Beloved Auntie came over for a visit, so we had an Adventure on the London Eye:

(most of the Rosafamily is camera shy, or at least don’t want their photos all over the internet, but the Rosabrother and his partner is in there somewhere).

And then we went to Kew:

And Whitstable:

There was a trip to Weymouth as well:

For someone who has nothing to say, I’ve somehow managed 228 words, and all on one cup of coffee.

I have a couple of weddings to go to this year, and needed an outfit. Having found a fabulous pattern (Dior New Look, mid calf, long sleeve), that the equally fabulous Rosamummy is entirely confident of being able to get to fit me, I went shopping for fabric. One of the suggested fabrics, shantung silk, is Not Cheap, and I need about a mile of whatever I decide to buy. Anyway, I commenced poking Google with a stick, and it disgorged a website that was selling aforesaid fabric for $5 a yard.

“Squeeeeeee!” I said, only precariously maintaining my perch on the giant purple ball that passes as a seat at my “no, Mr Bond, I expect you to die” desk. The cheapest I’d found it elsewhere was $12 a yard (eBay), which is fairly impressively cheap, or in John Lewis at £20 a yard, which made me blink and go “bibble,” after I did the dressmakers’ equation of “£20 a yard * 7 yards = ouch.”

I perused the site further.

“Ah,” I said, as all became clear.

No wonder it was $5 a yard. Who’s going to go to a wedding wearing a dress the colour of sick?

I don’t normally take the Tube in the evening - everyone’s hot and cross and I see no reason for making everyone hotter and crosser, so I walk from Oxford Circus to Liverpool St, thus saving gym fees as well. This evening, I had Stuff to Do, like laundry, and phoning my grandma, and knitting, so I thought “I shall get the Tube. It will be quicker, and I might even get a seat. Woo.”

So I got the Tube, and I even got a seat (woo).

Got to Bank, and the raised voices started.

“What you shove me for?”

[unclear]

“Don’t you [deleted-but-it-started-with-F] swear at me!”

[unclear]

And then suddenly I’m in a mass brawl of angry pushing shoving shouting people who are really quite angry and shouty indeed. Remember those cartoon fights where it’s a whirl of dust with the occasional fist or foot flying out? It was like that.

I ran away. I am officially No Good in a Fight.

For the love of God, people, get a grip! It’s a Tube train! If this one’s too busy, there’ll be another one along in a minute (and even a Central Line minute is only 90 seconds. Waiting for 90 seconds never killed anyone yet). And if someone steps on your foot, it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. There are huge gaps on the platforms at Bank, an angry shove in the wrong place at the wrong moment and someone could be badly hurt.

Your little violent outburst probably didn’t make you feel any better and caused hundreds of people to be horribly delayed on their journey home - was it really worth it?

Now, if you’ll excuse me, the nice ladies at Lush prescribed one of these after I went in and cried all over them, so I’m going to run myself a nice bath, pour myself a glass of wine, and hide for a bit.

(Apologies for lack of funny, I was quite badly frightened. It will all be hilarious tomorrow, I’m sure).