Showing 241-260 out of 234
After most of Islington moved to Wales, it was foolish of me to think about following. But the need to escape from Surrey becomes ever more pressing by the day, with housing developments, racing cyclists and incompetent dog walkers bearing down on us so hard we cannot bear it much longer. The builder boyfriend has
After an incredible 13 emails, Vodafone decided that I was who I was claiming to be, and refunded my money. I’m still not sure where my phone disappeared to, or whether it is coming back. They did not offer any explanation for why I bought a phone in their store in Guildford, got it home,
After launching an investigation into my missing phone, Vodafone informed me it could not deal with me any further until I went through a series of checks to prove that I was who I said I was. I then became locked in an Orwellian battle with an automated system that sent email after email demanding,
‘Can I ask you why you don’t want a smart phone?’ said the chirpy manager, as I stood blinking in front of him in the intensely red Vodafone shop. I took my iPhone out of my bag and explained that I wanted a second phone with no brain whatsoever. A stupid, backward phone was what
One of the village vegans gave the bacon sandwich resting on top of the recycling bin outside my house an accusing look. I had placed it there, on a plate, for the builder boyfriend who was underneath my jacked-up Volvo which had been making an alarming high-pitched wheeze. I always bring him a coffee and
Last night I dreamt I went on holiday again. It seemed to me I stood by the departure gate, and for a while I could not enter, for I kept setting the metal detector off. Then, like all unvaccinated dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed through the barrier. The
Someone else with my name is wreaking havoc with my attempts to control the Twitter account I don’t want. Obviously, I haven’t been on Twitter other than to stick my toe in briefly, then pull it back out after realising how very cold it is in there. But I can’t work out how to deactivate
‘Did you hear it?’ said a friend of mine, red-faced with the flush of a piece of news she couldn’t wait to offload, as she rushed into a church hall where we were attending an event. She was bursting with excitement because a mutual acquaintance had just been on a radio phone-in show banging the
The streetlighting engineer walked up and down outside my house trying to work out who was right: me, or my neighbour, the vegan. On the one hand, I was claiming this LED light was lighting nothing of importance on a deserted village green at night while shining through my bedroom window driving me insane, and
Rod Liddle Rabbits, always rabbits. I remember at age 13 forcing my poor parents to trudge despondently across hilly downland on the borders between Berkshire and Hampshire, with me jubilantly pointing out stuff like: ‘Look, it’s the combe where Bigwig met the fox!’ and ‘I think this could be the Efrafa warren!’ For a while,
Surprise, surprise. The person who had the shield taken out of the street light so it shone back into my bedroom window was precisely the person it was always going to be. I wish the world would shock me more, but it seldom seems to. When the council told me someone had demanded the full
The street lamp as bright as the Dog Star is back to its full glare outside my house. I won a small victory earlier this year when I persuaded the council to fit a shield to one side of it after threatening to throw myself out the window because I couldn’t sleep. But the other
We were enjoying our evening at the overpriced gastropub until a woman in a dark uniform appeared at our table. She didn’t introduce herself or explain why she was there, and the first thought that entered my head was that we were being arrested. It was partly that the woman was extremely well built and
My pro-vaxxer friends have been a lot nicer to me since they started testing positive for Covid. I’m calling my vaccinated friends ‘pro-vaxxer’, by the way, just so they can see how it feels to have a quirky-sounding label applied to them based on their personal choices about how to withstand a pandemic. Meanwhile, I’m