in the numerous attempts to open a bottle of wine with plastic cork
....without a corkscrew.

1. Try the old tried and tested pushing the cork into the bottle with makle thumb. Make a grown man cry.
2. Attempt the sharp knife routine - end up slicing a tiny amount of plastic out of the cork but still no nectar joy.
Host delves into cardboard boxes and drawers to find the elusive opening implement.
3. Use the drill bit blunt endy bit and a claw hammer to try and pop the cork into the bottle, Fail again.
4. Hosts tries to smash open the top of the bottle with a hammer, saying you could sieve out the glass. Guests restrain him.
5. In the age old style of Bernard of Black Books, place the drill bit into the chuck and attempt to drill the cork out in a sauve manner.
But the bit just doesn't bite into the cork and fails. Again. And yes. It was my idea.
6. Host goes out to the local happy shopper to try and buy a corkscrew.
Meanwhile, Sim breaks out ye olde screw and claw hammer routine. With the screw refusing to bite. Again.
7. With the Happy Shopper only selling screw caps for the local chavs, break out the tea bags.

After a manic week, it's been topped by a wonderful evening alone on the sofa avec laptop. Girlpants had an evening meeting he couldn't wriggle out of, so I've been surfing fellow blogs and generally enjoying myself. The joy of an evening alone on the sofa with sole control of the remote, polished off by his walking through the door with a couple of bottles of red quickly whipping together up some pancakes with maple syrup.

However, it was such a quiet and blissful night that you just knew it was going to go tits up. And mine was chatting to Girlpants over perfect pancakes smoothered in the sap of trees about Lent and what from my childhood it entailed. And the giving up of sweets for character building and what it would entail in adult terms.

So that would be me off the gin for six entire weeks. I don't give it much of a chance but I will try - wish me luck as I do expect to be rather grumpy over the next week or so. Roll on the smoothies! Meanwhile, Girlpants is still umming and ahhing over his. Chocolate is out of the question, as is crisps and tea. He has kindly offered to give up cabbage, sprouts or vodka but as he never partakes in any, it sort of defeats the notion. So he has instructed me to come up with something for him by tomorrow morning.

Silly silly boy.

Zoe always wishes peeps a very happy shag day on February 14th. As she notes, whilst it is a Hallmark day, it also involved the annual chore, but at least it means that it's all out of the way on one day of the year when the man has to make some effort in fussing over you.

However, my calendar is different. Maybe it's marriage or the fact that I fell for Hallmarks traps hook line and sinker, but there are other days that loom up just like Valentines. Like today.

Girlpants birthday.

The man claims he's 21 but in reality his mind is 40 and his body is that of a 32 yr old. And as it's birthday, it also means we have to do whatever he wants, which in itself can sound rather threatening. Lucky for me, tonight that means a five course meal in the local posh nosh establishment. Five rather large courses so have been starving myself all day so that I can sup in pure pleasure, in an outfit which I will ensure has an elasticated waist. The birthday boy has already told me that he refuses to wear the rather large birthday boy badge that I try to make him wear each year, so I will have to settle for him to be served dessert whilst being serenaded by tuneless Happy Birthday's, whilst the rest of us try to avoid the heat from the 32 candles I have purchased especially for the event. After all, there had to be some sort of embarressment involved, doesn't there??

A little less than a year ago, I blogged about one of Girlpants colleagues who was trying to encourage us to have mini-me's. 

Professor Lovely has his own business, works for a living and also consults in the uni. I met him in the first few months when Girlpants & I got together and basically we were cocky (via conversation) to each other. This has continued to this day - we're both part of the furniture however we jokingly rant, take the piss and basically have a go at each other in a friendly kinda way.

But I do love the guy, to the point tonight that I slurringly asked him to be Godfather of my unborn babies in my drunken haze. And in all seriousness, he looked at me and said:

"You do realise I will drag both you and them to church..."

Catholicism. You can run but you can't really hide from it

quiz night in the pub directly across the road from the office. After discussing various strategic drinking methods, for some sorry reason, we all decided that going en masse immediately after work and mixing our drinks was a great idea, which of course would mean we would ensure our winning with a fantastic score.

In truth, the several terminator cocktails and inability to stand up straight may have had something to do with our abysmal score. Or the fact that most of us hadn't eaten properly during the day and then left the our carefully prepared path of strategic drinking for one of tastebuds. Or the fact that we were in the pub for nearly four hours waiting for the quiz to start. Eventually, our attempt to take the £100 prize money disintergrated into a farce as stunner data pixie and finance pixie were arguing over answers during the double point round, talking over the actual questions, whilst personally, I thought that I was rather outstanding, yelling insults over at the quizmaster telling him that maybe a few seasons watching QI may be in order whilst stumbling making my way to the little girls room.

And when I returned, as I smugly sat back, stunner data pixie suddenly pointed out that I had had toilet paper trailing out from the back of ye olde work trews for the last 15 minutes, asking if I had managed to swipe the quiz answers from the now dishearted man on the mic, and if so, please share...

However, things are as frantic as a mad thing as I grapple with work and the disasterious week from hell. I will post, as soon as I have a moment to catch my breath...