"A Lot of Nonsense...Signifying Nothing"

Do you ever have one of those days where you'd give ANYTHING to crawl back into bed, pull up the covers, and spend the day watching soppy old movies, reading books and nibbling on chocolate?

Well that was me today.  In fact the whole day felt 'wrong' and I felt out of sorts and sure my alternate self (who is currently living out an impossibly cool lifestyle of hedonistic rock n' roll, artist friends and exclusive parties...last seen on a private yacht in Cannes...) would have keeled over in dismay if submitted to my most surreal but mundane Wednesday.

This morning I found myself in an overpriced Health food store silently debating (for WAY too long) the merits of two different types of Aloe Vera juice.  (Don't ask - the stuff is vile - but given I can't properly eat or enjoy food these days I'm on a pseudo health kick in an effort to at least derive some positive outcome from my recent mouth debacle....ie. look amazing in my skinny jeans)

Anyway, what made the situation utterly surreal was the woman in full head-to-toe black 'Burka' stood beside me, staring silently out through the tiny eye-holes of her covering, making me slightly uncomfortable.  I quickly did a mental check:  offensive cleavage?  (not a chance; was wearing my 'old skool' Coke t-shirt)...gold cross around my neck? (nope - I was wearing my Egyptian cartouche necklace with my name in Arabic on it and - wait a minute that was it - I just figured it out!  Duh...She must have taken me for a fellow Muslim...)

At any rate, she suddenly turned to me and started chatting a mile a minute, and what came out of her mouth (she was a fellow Aloe Vera obsessive) wasn't as surprising as the way she spoke. She sounded totally 'street'!  Dropping her vowels, saying 'innit' a lot and sounding not unlike your typical stroppy, streetwise, South London school girl, it was hard to marry that voice with such a severe and extremist image.  Weird.

My morning only got stranger when I then spent a rain-soaked hour bored and claustrophobic inside a kitchen shop with yet another person of the Muslim persuasion who was indulging in a right proper game of haggling and hyperbole over the outrageously priced kitchen in question. I just wasn't on good form and he knew it - weaving in and out of tricky questions like a pro while I just sat there defeated, daydreaming of all the (infinitely better) ways I could spend thousands of pounds right about now...

This afternoon culminated in Dumpie somehow getting hold of some scissors (yeah I know - great mother) and turning our front landing into something resembling the abandoned church entrance after a Greek wedding.  Millions of bits of white 'confetti' were strewn across the carpet, and on closer inspection  I realised they were bits of stickers, rendering the whole mess almost impossible to hoover up (sigh).

Add a surprise 'poo-poo explosion' to the mix at round about 5:17pm (umm...not mine) and that pretty much sums up my day.  Shakespeare would probably say: "A lot of nonsense, signifying nothing".  

And he wouldn't be wrong