LA

Hi. My name's Giraffe-a-licious and I'm a listaholic.

Thank you for making me feel so welcome at this, my first Listaholic's Anonymous meeting. I can't quite pinpoint when my problem began. Perhaps it is genetic. My mum has a list problem too but has never confronted it. Not that I'm trying to shift the blame. I know this list-making is of my own doing and I am responsible for resolving it. It's a daily fight for me against bullet-points and the urge to alphabetise. There is something so satisfying about ticking off the items on a list. But once you've ticked one, you need to tick another and another until you realise that you can never find true fulfilment at the bottom of a list.

I write lists. I think lists. I actively search for other peoples' lists. It's taking over my life. The BBC released a list a few years ago of the Nation's Top 100 books. I have made it my goal to read all 100. I'm at 56 right now. I spend my days wading through Bleak House, convinced that Dickens wrote it merely to torture me and yet I must go on. I must complete the list.

Have you ever thought about the word 'listless'? The OCED defines it as "lacking energy or enthusiasm". That is me in a life without lists! A life without lists, be they shopping lists or to-do lists, is a life half lived. Brothers and sisters, join me in my joyous list-making! We can all live in a more organised, efficient world - what bliss!

So... will anyone be my sponsor?

Christmas, Cotton Traders and Charity Shops

I'm concerned for my sanity. I think I've aged 20 years in the 3 months that my sister has been away on the other side of the pond. She may be picking up the accent but I've picked up some more disturbing habits.

It started quite innocently. I merely accompanied the parents on a visit to a bird reserve whilst on holiday. The next thing I knew I had an article in Birds magazine. I had started down a road that could only end in pain. Yesterday I found myself doing my Christmas shopping. In Marks & Spencer. I'm voluntarily listening to Radio 2. And last night I reached my lowest ebb. I found myself browsing through the Cotton Traders brochure. Great is my woe! I have betrayed my youth and embraced middle-age two decades too early. Only the return of my younger sister can save me now. Thursday cannot come too soon.

I apologise for bringing Christmas into these blog pages before the end of October. It is not by choice. A couple of days ago I heard Fairytale of New York on the radio and today I turned on the TV only to be confronted with Mistletoe and Wine on a music channel. I started my shopping out of necessity. I've found that a wheelchair and Christmas shopping make unhappy bedfellows. Crowds greatly increase the already not inconsiderable stress of navigating department stores. So as the organised world starts its shopping in November, I have to get started in October.

On a more satisfying note I discovered the world of charity shops yesterday. The perfect place to pick up books and films. Traditionally I'm a library girl when it comes to books but lately I have been very disappointed in their stock. Not only that but when I asked to reserve a title I was informed that it would cost me £1 whether or not they managed to locate the book! You don't go into a cafe and let the proprietor charge you £1 for a cup of tea, whether or not he can find the teabags! Anyway, as a result of visiting 3 charity shops yesterday I came away with 5 books and 3 films for under £10. What's more, that £10 is going to charidee, not to the local council that fund ridiculous art installations. Win-win. Read, view, take them back to the shops and they get sold again. Highly recommended.

School daze - that's an overused pun isn't it?

I was watching Grosse Pointe Blank the other night. For those not in the know it's a 90s rom-com, but of a slightly more twisted variety than most. John Cusack plays a hitman returning to his home town for a high school reunion and meeting up again with his long lost love played by Minnie Driver. It got my thinking about school reunions. Being a mere stripling of 23 I haven't had to face that potential nightmare as yet and I'm desperately hoping that I never have to.

There are only two reasons to attend a school reunion. Curiosity and vanity. Curiosity to see how people have turned out and vanity because you are convinced that your life is better than theirs. What a sad waste of an evening. If you're rich and successful then you've not really gained anything from going. You're still rich and successful when you leave and have probably only succeeded in making a few people feel like failures. If you're struggling through life then you'll still be struggling when you leave and will have merely found a few more people to hate in life. People with kids will start wishing they didn't have them. People without kids will start to wish they did. It's a no-win situation. The grass is always greener and all that. Someone else's life may sound wonderful for those few hours but we never see the reality of it. School reunions are all about a facade. As soon as you step over the threshold you're suddenly and inexplicably enthusiastic about your life, career, children and everything else that you've been moaning about for the past 10 years.

Personally a school reunion is my worst nightmare because it is the place in the universe where you are most likely to be asked the, "So, what do you do?" question. Gah. Save me. The next time someone asks me that I think I'll take a leaf out of John Cusack's book - "I'm a professional killer." Cool. I'm pretty sure that at least 80% of the population are unhappy in their work so it's a nasty irony that we are constantly being defined by what we do rather than who we are. Sure, I've got my spiel - "Well not a lot actually. I've been ill with M.E. for 10 years which is quite rubbish but I do bits of voluntary work here and there." I'm as guilty as the next person though because I always seem to follow it up with, "and what about you?"

What is boils down to is that anyone that you really care about from your school days you'll still be in touch with. Death to school reunions! Pointless, miserable and fake.

Confessions of a Ridiculous Mind

Whilst watching Michael Palin drive a steam train around Poland yesterday my mum uttered the immortal words, "Do you use a steering wheel to drive a train?" Ah mum. How I love her. This is also the woman who confused Bruce Willis with Bruce Lee. No mum, Bruce Willis isn't a dead martial arts expert and that isn't Bruce Lee running around Nakatomi Plaza out-witting Alan Rickman.

Sadly this tendancy of revealing a lack of understanding on certain matters (it's actually a rather sweet combination of naivety, innocence and ignorance) appears to be genetic. For years I thought that there were A LOT of Wombles in Wimbledon. I still maintain that error was the fault of whomsoever was hired to sing the theme tune. Think back will you? #...the Wombles of Wimbledon (singer takes breath), Common are we...# You see my problem? Either there are a vast number of them or they all speak Estuary English.

My biggest clanger came during a game of Absolute Balderdash. Evidently I had left my brain at the door that day because when tasked with inventing a feasible plot line for a film of which I had only the title, I somehow stumbled onto the brilliant idea of astronauts going to the moon and diving in the Sea of Tranquility. I was very proud of myself and certain I was destined to get a few points out of my clever story. That is until it was pointed out that the Sea of Tranquility is not exactly a sea and to the hilarity of many present I was left sadly trying to defend my theory of water on the moon. Not my finest hour.

I do a great line in misheard lyrics too. But perhaps that had best wait for another day. I can only take so much embarrassment at a time.

To whom it may concern

Dear Kettering Borough Council

What the heck is wrong with you? A couple of days ago it was announced that you are commissioning a £48,000 piece of artwork for the town. Now I'm as much of an art fan as the next person (not too big a fan then obviously) but £48,000 worth of tax-payers' money going to create pieces of sculpture that would be called eye-sores if they weren't art, is absurd.

You have made a great deal of the fact that you're asking the members of the general public to vote and decide which of three designs we would most like to see. If you're going to that trouble could you not also have a 'no artwork' option? An opportunity for those of us who would like to see the money spent on maintaining roads, improving libraries or providing better school bus services, to make our feelings known.

Apparently artists were asked to design pieces that would 'create a link between three green spaces so visitors to Kettering could appreciate how the town fits together'. What utter claptrap. Firstly, visitors to Kettering? You're having a laugh right? I suppose it's conceivable that someone could get lost on the way to Cambridge or Birmingham and find themselves wandering the streets. Even if that were the case I'm not convinced that they are likely to be overcome with delight at the way that these three oddball sculptures reflect Kettering's togetherness.

It's not the first time that the council has done something like this. Back in 2005 you paid £10,000 for a monstrosity of a clock in the town centre. At least in this instance it was erected for a specific purpose - to celebrate 100 years of the Rotary Club - although how many of our town's residents actually know that is another matter.

I am fed up with local government complaining that it doesn't have enough money for vital services, upping the council tax and then spending out on such frivolous and pointless projects.

Yours grumpily
Giraffe-A-Licious

Words fail to describe just how horrific this clock is.

Nobody needs good Neighbours

It's not often that I'm proud of myself but today I hold my head high. I haven't seen an episode of Neighbours for four months. I deserve a chip to carry around with me like in AA! Although to be fair I do have an inkling that it's probably a wee bit easier to stay clean of an Australian soap opera than the demon drink.

I can't remember when I first started watching Neighbours. My mum watched it so I probably first got hooked on a sick day off school. I've never watched any other soap and yet Neighbours sucked me in. Maybe it was the sunshine (although Home & Away had that too) or maybe the fact that it was more light-hearted than most other TV dramas? I don't know, but somehow it got its claws into me and hung on there for 10-15 years.

When I became ill with M.E. the addiction grew, worryingly but understandably fast. I was able to do so little that the TV took on a rather sad significance in my life. This is excusable. What is not, is the fact that even once I started to feel better and get out more, my day continued to revolve around Ramsey Street's residents. Of course it's only a 25 minute programme, that shouldn't cause too many problems. But the BBC are a canny bunch of schedulers when they want to be. Neighbours led to Doctors, Doctors to Murder She Wrote, then it was off to Channel 4 for Countdown and before I knew it two and a half hours had disappeared into the ether.

But I shall not dwell on these dark days for now I am cured! And it's all thanks to Wimbledon. They take Neighbours off the air for those two glorious weeks of tennis in the summer. This year, once I got to the end of the fortnight I realised that I didn't miss those Aussies one jot. I decided to see how I got on without dipping into the lives of Susan, Karl and co every day. That they had just killed off Stingray also helped in my decision making process - a clanger of an error in my mind! Well what do you know? I survived. In fact I felt far better. I read or wrote or rested or just watched the world go by out of my window - all of it more productive than those hours in front of the gogglebox. Because by doing away with Neighbours, I also got rid of Doctors and in turn Murder, She Wrote. I have had the odd foray into the world of Jessica Fletcher since then I'll admit, but you can't beat a bit of Angela Lansbury detective work!

So dear readers, I am free. Those strangely bronzed Aussies hold no sway over me now. So they can move it to Channel 5 for all I care. I just hope that the rest of the soaps follow shortly.

Old before my time

They say you’re as young as you feel. Well, that puts me at about 80 then. I get the feeling that there’s a spritely granny in Weston-super-Mare or some such seaside town running around with my youth. Not only do I creak when I bend down (or up if I get that far) but I have recently developed some other, distinctly pensioner like tendencies.

I hold forth on the state of society and bemoan the lack of respect present in young people today. I am constantly expressing my surprise at the youth of the weathermen. I lament the demise of the English language, its grammar and punctuation. I can’t understand why half the female population of Britain are content to show such quantities of flesh in summer, or these days even in winter! I despair at the amounts of money spent on weddings. I bewail the modern society’s reliance on technology and it’s idolisation of beauty and fashion. I hate the fact that it is no longer safe for children to play outside without constant supervision. I long for the days when you could ring your bank and speak to a real, living, breathing person from your local branch. I’m constantly frustrated by this generation’s ignorance of British history and the men and women who fought for our freedom. I fail to comprehend the appeal of so-called ‘celebrities’ and the national interest in every aspect of their lives.

And what’s more, I have this overwhelming desire to share my opinions with anyone unlucky enough to cross my path. Sorry.