Kinky La Rue

Because there are some odd things happening in the news these past few days.

Earlier on in the week I read about the person who was fired from their job at McDonald’s somewhere in Holland, for giving their colleague an extra slice of cheese in their hamburger. Thank god the courts saw sense.

Then this morning I read about the driver in Scotland who was given a £60 fine, for blowing his nose in his car, while it was at a standstill. The copper who issued the ticket had previously ticketed somebody else for littering, because they dropped a tenner. Anally retentive or what?

Or what about the shopper who’s now banned from Tesco’s in Wales because she wore her pajamas to the store to pick up some cigarettes? I have to admit that although I haven’t worn pjs as such, I have worn to Tesco’s a tatty old pair of sweatpants that I wear at bedtime. Because they look like old sweatpants, nobody bats an eyelid. Saying that, I have popped into my local Tesco’s wearing my slippers, just because I couldn’t be arsed to change into my shoes. Admittedly they were weren’t of the fluffy variety, they’re the suede man slippers that I bought in Marks and Spencer’s years ago.

Some people need to lighten up just a touch.

I think I may go ahead and start it a bit earlier than anticipated.

I’ve taken another look at the Open University website, obviously reading more about the Criminology degree that I want to do and there’s an Openings course on “Understanding Society”, which is kind of a segue into the more fully-fledged course I’m going to start in October. It’s a short course for those (like me) who haven’t written an essay in some time. In my case over 20yrs (eep!) so I reckon it’s a good idea to start right from the beginning. And it does count towards the degree.

It starts in June, which is good timing, as I can register for it when I get back from New York in April.

Wish me luck.

One thing I have been meaning to mention for some time is a not so cool experience I had with a travel website over the holidays.

Recently I booked two tickets to go to New York at Easter. This isn’t for work, it’s purely pleasure. I reckon what with my degree coming up later this year, this’ll be my last chance to be going anywhere for a while, so I’m making this trip a good ‘un.

But I digress. I had finally booked the flights via Expedia, but I did have an unpleasant experience with Netflights.com. You know that old adage, if it’s too good to be true, it usually is? Not that their prices were brilliantly low in comparison to other sites, but there was a few quid difference to make me think I was getting a bit of a bargain.

There was a bit of a sale going on with flights these past few weeks and Netflights were selling Virgin Atlantic tickets for around £300. Virgin’s own site were selling the same tickets, same flight times, for around £340. Bargain I thought, so I tried to book the two seats. When I put in my credit card details a message popped up telling me I had to call Netflights direct. Bit strange I thought. I knew it wasn’t the card. So I called them. Which wasn’t cheap I might add. Not only is it not a local number, I was kept waiting for a good 20mins.

When I finally got through, guess what they told me? That these flights didn’t exist but they’re happy to sell me more expensive flights. It was all I could do to refrain from chucking a few expletives down the phone at them. What a waste of time and my money. What ticked me off was that they had my credit card details. So the next thing I did when I got off the phone with Netflights was to call my credit card company and warn them of any transactions coming from this website.

And this isn’t a fly-by-night website. I like to think I know what I’m doing when it comes to checking out and using sites. Netflights aren’t only ABTA and ATOL bonded, they’re a subsidiary of Thomas Cook. If you’re not in the UK, Thomas Cook is a travel company that’s been in business for over a hundred years. Indeed, Thomas Cook (the bloke the company’s named after) was the inventor of the package holiday here. Not to mention at the bottom of their main page, they have all sorts of travel awards they supposedly won.

Anyway, I’m not going to tell you not to use Netflights.com, but I will suggest that you use them with caution. You may have even used them already and had no problems.  As I said before, I finally found flights with Continental Airlines via Expedia and they were a pleasure to deal with. And here’s a tip when using Expedia, if you can’t find your flights or hotel dates on their website, it’s worth giving them a call. I got the exact times I wanted for our itinerary which wasn’t on their site. It seems their computers are updated quicker than their website.

Looking at the calendar to my right, it’s been well over a week since my last entry. My apologies. What with the training for the voluntary job and trying to fit everything else in to the rest of the week, including work, the week has somehow gotten past me.

I had also made a promise to myself to not spend so much time at the computer or watching telly. The past few weeks my reading has suffered. I’ve only been reading on the trains when going to work and that’s not good. Books that usually take a matter of days for me to finish have taken weeks. That has to change. And also, with the training with the voluntary job, you do actually get homework and are given quite a bit of reading material. Which is obviously good. But with all these changes I have neglected to keep my blog up to date, for which I apologise. There was an incident last week that I wanted to blog about but as I said, the time just got away from me. I may still do yet. I have quite a few things going around in my head, which I’d love to put down on “paper”.

I thought I might let you know that I started training for my volunteer job this past Monday and I’m happy with the way things are going (well, apart from actually getting homework!!)

Which means from now on I’ll no longer be working on Mondays and Tuesdays, or for that matter, Sundays. That’s just solely my choice. But at least I’ll still be available from Wednesdays to Saturdays.

I’m not sure what will happen later on in the year once I start my degree. I’ll play things by ear. I will have to keep doing this for now though. Paying for the degree won’t be cheap. Maybe I should have a wish list asking for gift vouchers for the courses I wish to take,lol. They have those at the Open University. But as of this moment, I’m very much part-time now. I’ll change the text on my website to reflect the new changes, so there’ll be no excuses for gents to call me asking for a booking on either a Monday or Tuesday. What d’ya reckon I still will,lol.

The past couple of days phone calls has made me reminiscent about this song, sung by Karyn White sometime back in the 90s.

On Friday night at around 7.30 I received a phone call asking for an outcall to Ilford in Essex. For those unfamiliar with London and its geography, it’s a fair distance. I live in South London and Essex is all the way across town, past East London. It’s basically on the border of Essex county. Not Central London anymore.

Last night at approx. the same time, I received another request for an outcall to come to Hertfordshire. Hertfordshire?!  This is even further than Essex, just going in another direction. It’s what we townies consider the countryside.

Now I know because of this freezing weather we’re suffering it seems like a great idea to have some rumpy pumpy in the warmth of your own surroundings. But calling me last minute, without any regard as to how I’d get to yours in freezing temperature, ice and snow, really is a tad thoughtless. Then imagine me trying to get back home in the wee hours of the night. It doesn’t even bear thinking about.

I have had to chuckle at these phone calls. I’m thinking to myself, how do these gents expect me to get to their houses, in this weather, at such short notice?? I know, I’ll do that twirly thing that Wonderwoman (yes I know, a different superhero to Superwoman but you get the picture) does. She goes from Diana Prince to Wonderwoman in a blink of an eye. I could go from homebody to Kinky Brandy in the blink of an eye too; thongs, sussies and basque just like that. And what for travel? Pfft, forget the icy roads my car would skid about in. Forget the long train journey hampered by the snow and ice. I know! I’ll use my Invisible Jet. I’ll be there in two shakes of my truth lasso.

Gentlemen, c’mon! If you’ve been experiencing difficulties in getting in to work this week, do you think I’d fare much better? And at such short notice? I know it’s not exactly a romantic picture, but believe me, with this weather, I’m curled up either on the sofa or in my bed in my warmest pee-jays wearing double socks which can just about feel the warmth from the hot water bottle my feet are resting on. In other words, I’m just as human as you.

That’s not to say that if I had an advanced booking I’d have done my damndest to get there. I would’ve and have done. I can feel my toes wincing now at the memories of some of the outcalls I’ve made to the Greater London area, standing on freezing cold train platforms. But c’mon gents, as gorgeous and as wonderful as I am, I’m not Superwoman, or indeed Wonderwoman. Even if I have performed some amazing feats in the bedroom.

Tomorrow I’m at the flat. I have a booking from 10.30am-12pm, but then I have another at 4.30pm. Which means I have a four and a half hour break inbetween bookings.

Now normally I don’t see more than 1 person a day, occassionally 2 gents. But I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do to fill up my time than to entertain another booking inbetween. It’s either that or wander around the streets of London looking like a lost (and cold) soul. The other danger is that I might go shopping to see what’s left of the sales. Which is a temptation I’d rather not succumb to.

If there’s anybody that’s actually made it into work this week and can spare some time between the hours of 12pm and 4.30pm, please give me a call. Help fill up that 4 and a half hour break.

I had a gentleman write to me a couple of days ago email me to tell me how much he enjoyed my blog. He started following it after he came to see me a couple of months ago.

I do get the odd compliment when gents come and see me, but to have somebody take the time to write to me to tell me how much they enjoy my blog is truly touching. So thank you A in Israel.

I have to admit,  I do get a kick when somebody tells me they enjoy my ramblings. Sometimes I do have a rant and I’m unsure whether or not to reveal how I really feel. But there seems to be those who have come to understand me and know when I just need to vent, or when I need to take the mickey out of either myself or the job. Blogging really does help.

I’m not sure if my blogging will be cut back once I start my volunteer job next week as I’m afraid it’s not something I can talk about much without giving too much of me away. We’ll see. But thanks to those who’ve faithfully followed me. Whether it be from the beginning, intermittently, or just last month.

Again, Happy New Year to you and if you’re in the UK, don’t let the freezing temperatures get you down. Make this year a good year, I plan to.xx

Well, not quite true but I received a letter just before Christmas from my car insurers, stating that I had paid too much insurance protection and that I may entitled to a refund.

I had totally forgot about it and was having a bit of a tidy up today (as you do after the holidays) and I found the letter in a pile of mess. Hoping that there wasn’t some sort of time limit to these sort of claims, I called my insurance company and guess what? I’m getting a refund.

Guess how much? £35. Woohoo! And that’s with interest apparently. I’m to expect a cheque in 6-10 working days. I’ll have to be careful how I spend it. I don’t want to go all crazy,lol.