Oh... You'd LOVE ittt!

This is one I’ve been wanting to share for ages. But I’ve needed to wait long enough for the protagonist to be as far away as possible before I publish.

When I get invited to drink with a friend I haven’t seen for a while, I get really excited. Actually, being invited to anything will do. But this was an old friend. A friend I rarely get to see.

So when she turned up with another friend, I was a little miffed. And I could leave this here since it’s another thing people do that annoys me – inviting friends along to meet-ups that were earmarked 'exclusive'.

Anyway, my story goes on and it gets worse. Two other people show up.

They could have talked amongst themselves and left my mate and I to catch up but… I had unwittingly written ‘Please can someone talk at me all evening?’ across my face.

That’s exactly what this woman did…

Actually, her story was quite interesting. She was super athletic, super competent and all girl power, which I like.

She ran her own business and seemed to be balanced between being dynamic and personable. I could even have been grateful to have met her if…

She hadn’t begun talking at me about her athletic prowess like I needed to be reminded of the definition. (def: Prowess: noun. Distinguished bravery; extraordinary ability).

Oh MY! It was relentless. It was gruesome. It was crazy. There simply wasn’t anything this woman hadn’t achieved. And she’d travelled with it too. Been to some amazing places, far far away.

I asked all the right questions. Ooh’d and aah’d at polite intervals. Showed as much enthusiasm as I could muster during a 40+ minute onslaught of a well-rehearsed monologue.

Now… I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, uh-oh! This is definitely going to annoy me. Well, yes, it did. For quite a bit of the 40 minutes but NOT as much as what followed.

It was beginning to dawn on me that she hadn’t asked anything about me.

She had no idea where my own athleticism lies in relation to her hectic schedule of kayaking 3000m around some pacific island, after dropping 500m down a cliff, into a cave where the kayak awaited her.

Nor had I had a moment to match the sky-diving excursion that had her pivoting around a lighthouse off the coast of New Zealand, as a pre-curser to an epic heli-skiing escapade off Mount Cook.

I was too busy learning about the summit heights of the High Peak in the Southern Alps - her annual climb, punctuated by Tasman Glacier to the east and the Hooker Glacier to the Southwest. Man… they are high! But she topped it recently with a trek to the Khumbu Glacier nestled between the ridge of Lhotse-Nuptse and the mighty Mount Everest!

And this woman runs marathons around these and other super-peaks in the most scary parts of the world. But not before she’s scaled north faces with a camel on her back singing the national anthem… in Swahili. Or so it would seem.

So, I was kind of awoken when she suddenly engaged me, directly. It wasn’t the question I’d momentarily decided to dread, instead it was this:

‘Oh… you would LOVE itt!’

What is that? What does this statement mean?

It can only be a prompt. A self-fulfilling prompt. She knows absolutely nothing about me! I feel it's for me to respond with something like ‘Oh you’re incredible! Oh wow! I wish I could be like you!’

Without thinking I responded. ‘No. I wouldn’t’. And the conversation went on as follows:

Her: ‘But why?’

Me: ‘Because I don’t want to do those things.’

Her: ‘But why?’

Me: ‘Because I actually don’t enjoy falling 500m from the edges of craggy cliffs into fibreglass cut-outs, no wider than my waist with a surface area of my kitchen table, sitting on water, in the dark, probably backwards and likely, upside down.

Pause…

Her: ‘But don’t you want to get out and DO things? What do you DO?’

Oh my word. There it is.

Me: ‘Stay at home.’

Her: ‘And do what?’ in a slightly squeaky voice.

Me: ‘Feel safe, warm and happy. I work hard, get to the end of my day, light my fire and share supper with my family.’

Her: ‘Oh! I just can’t face my day without achieving something.’

Okay, Lady! Now you’ve annoyed me. I sit up a bit.

Me: ‘I don’t like the feeling of falling like a stone. I don’t fancy battling the Pacific Ocean. I don't want to wrestle mountains. I have no desire to feel pain from the freezing cold.

Me: ‘But I do like spending time in my home that I helped build. I do enjoy caring for my family. I look forward to watching sunset and sunrise from a nearby hill with them. I don’t feel I have to run away. I’m happy with the life I lead’.

So, please, just because you’re bionic, don’t assume others want to be like you.

It’s annoying!

You alright with that, Love?

There's a man, wielding an electric tool, trying to hang his front door.

"You alright with that, Love?"

The traffic slowed as we approached the umpteenth, 4-way traffic light across 5 miles of Wiltshire. It's as if all the people around a table in Highways England get the idea to improve roads in the same area, at the same time. It's really annoying.

Whatever, it was going to be a long wait.

Annie, my fellow female wood engineer, and I, had already spent our jokes about traffic and lights and roads and potholes and cones and rush hours and anything else to do with taking bloody ages trying to drive home. We just wanted to get home.

But luckily, here, at these lights, we could watch a random man trying to hang his front door. Entertainment indeed!

Even better that he was using electric tools.

He'd made good headway and it looked like the top of the door was attached - the sunlight glinted off the brass hinge nicely. But as he tested the opening/closing movement, it was clear the gap between door and frame wasn't so good.

I would have suggested the hinges were screwed on a bit wonky and probably not countersunk properly but, I didn't.

Annie and I sank deeper into our seats to escape the semi-automatic juddering of the screwdriver-bit skipping the internal drive on the screw head. A classic case of chronic inexperience.

I noticed he was using a drill rather than impact driver. "Ooof!" we simultaneously thought, blowing out our cheeks. Did he know the torque levels in an impact driver are higher than the drill? He'll be exhausted by teatime. The impact driver makes it far more efficient to quickly drive screws into the hardwood door. A lot less effort.

Should we tell him?

We felt his pain.

"Are you alright with that, love?"

His frustration was rising. We knew there were problems to come if he stripped those screws. He'd be ripping the door from the frame if things went really wrong.

Was it worth telling him now, before he attached more hinges?

Things did go wrong. Quite quickly. The sorry door suddenly hung from the top hinge, like a limb hanging from a tendon. The brass contorted from strain. And of course, he'd now messed up the pilot holes. His only hope was to drive longer screws into the existing holes through a new hinge. Our experience told us that was obvious. But was it to him?

We sighed.

I looked at Annie.

"Are you thinking the same as me?"

"Yep," she replied.

Sharing a knowing smile, we left his self-respect intact.

Finally the lights turned green. I released the handbrake and followed the moving stream of cars.

However...

What if we were to lean out of the windows and offer the all too familiar "Are you alright with that, love?"

You might guess the answer!

But, imagine if the roles were reversed. It's unlikely that a van with two blokes in it would resist offering themselves should they'd have stopped alongside us.

And, although this is more of a serious blog, it's a point I enjoy making!

The only time I feel undermined, embarrassed and deskilled when I'm working, is when an assumptive bloke says to me "Are you alright with that, Love?"

Memo to Men (Oh! That's a brilliant name for another Blog!)

And I'm addressing this demographic because it's the only category this applies to:

Just because I have an electric screwdriver or a hammer in my hand, you don't need to worry about me.

It's annoying!

Pilates from the front

This is not a story about people farting... It's funnier!

I don't know what it is about Pilates, I just cannot stick to doing it.

I can't figure out if I find it boring, ineffectual or that I'm so inflexible that frankly, I'll be in a chair with a straw before the beneficial effects reach any part of me that's still of any use.

Do you actually believe it when they say you can sweat doing it? I don't!

I just can't commit to it. You know, do it regularly, forever. I know this because each time I've come away from half completing a bank of 5 sessions, my reluctance to sign up for more says it all.

I'm not that bad. I can do the basics: legs up, down, side-to-side, lying on the mat, unintentionally half-way off the mat; now working with flexi band, now without flexi band - because it has pinged off somewhere - and there it is. I'm mortified. I crawl on my hands and knees across the room to find it strapped across someone's face.

Maybe it's because I struggle to do it with other people in the room.

I could do it at home... I'd make a plan, write it into the calendar so then it becomes the law: ‘Tuesday & Thursdays, 6.30pm Pilates with Janice on-line’

Nope! Absolutely no chance. The guilt of not making it to my exercise mat each Tuesday at 6.30pm would be terrible. At least when I don't get in my car to go to a class, I can forgive myself because it's too cold, too far, too boring and I'm probably not doing it properly anyway.

Which annoys me!

It annoys me that such tiny, tiny movements can cause me such difficulty. And it annoys me that I'm expected to mimic the bendy athlete at the front of the room who is probably into their fifth hour of pushing their pelvis into the floor that day.

And I'm not the only one who isn't a contortionist in the room, by the way. I'm in good company with others suffering from early onset of Riga mortis.

Nope! I've decided. Pilates isn't for me. It annoys me.

I wasn't alone one week...

It was towards the end of the session. We'd completed the mat work pretty badly and it was time to centre ourselves on our feet. So, as we duly stood on one leg I really tried to concentrate. I was going for a Personal Best, trying to beat 2 minutes and 10 seconds.

But I was thinking more about how the instructress simply looked like she wouldn't fall over even if she was pushed, like a weeble wobble. You know, those little plastic toys with round bottoms that, whichever way you push them over, they kind of spring back up?

Anyway, we were utterly rubbish at 'centering' on one leg. Literally falling every which way without bouncing back up. And for the third week running of being passively aggressively scolded and advised to practice standing on one leg while brushing our teeth to improve our centering, one of the ladies put her hand up from the middle of the room.

'Ummm,' she offered, controlling herself, 'I'm a dental hygienist and would prefer it if people actually concentrated on brushing their teeth rather than standing on one leg. I find many patients too busy lunging, centering or squatting to do justice to the job of simply standing for 2 minutes with a toothbrush.'

Brilliant!

I'll forgive her for ruining my chance of a PB that time as I was more compelled to applaud her, which I did, with two legs firmly on the ground. For Goodness sake - I was never going to manage clapping on one leg!

She also inspired me to write a separate blog 'Yay! The Media's New Health Plan'.

My stand with the dental hygienist: don't interfere with my teeth-brushing.

It's annoying.

Thanks, lovely lady!