it’s not a good time for enidd right now

the first bad thing to happen was the man losing his job. his company failed to get the further investment it needed, and in the early months of 2008 it died, slowly and with a maximum of stress: “it’s o.k., we’re saved!”, “oh, no we aren’t!”, “oh yes we are!”. but at the end of march the music stopped on “oh no we’re not” and since then the man has been looking for new work and not yet finding it.

then enidd’s dentist found a strange white patch on her gum and made her an appointment for a biopsy. the surgeon was reassuring, saying that the patch didn’t look like any cancer he’d ever seen, and after that enidd started to sleep a little better at night. but four weeks have passed, and enidd still hasn’t had the results of the test. today came the first contact from the lab, in the form of a bill for $150. the man suggests that the 60 days they’ve given enidd to pay it means that her chances of survival into june are pretty high.

the third bad thing is the worst and the hardest to write about. enidd isn’t even going to try to do it properly - it’s still too close, and her thoughts are still too mixed up.

three weeks ago, enidd opened her inbox to find an email from angus. angus was enidd’s partner before she met the man. enidd and angus had lived together in hong kong and malaysia; they’d travelled together throughout south-east asia. they were still friends, albeit distant ones. enidd remembers smiling as she opened the email, a reply to a discussion that had been active a couple of months before. but the mail wasn’t from angus; it was from his mother and it said that angus had died at five o’clock that morning of kidney failure.

great mistakes in mexican drinking

mexico-flagsenidd and the man have discovered a new drink – or rather, like greatness, a new drink has been thrust upon them. the michelada is a mix of lemon juice and cold mexican beer, served in a glass rimmed with salt, and there is nothing more refreshing when the tropical sun has been beating on your head all morning.

the scene is a seafront restaurant in la paz. enidd and the man are sitting at a street-side table, looking out over the sea of cortez. the waiter, a middle-aged man with an impressive mustache, approaches their table.

enidd: i’ll have a buck’s fizz, please.

(she actually ordered a michelada, a drink listed in the beer section of the menu, thinking that it must be a type of mexican beer that she’d not yet tried, but to enhance the story for british readers, let’s pretend that the new drink is listed in the champagne section, and it’s called the buck’s fizz.)

waiter: moet and chandon, or bollinger?

enidd: no, a buck’s fizz.

waiter: yes, moet and chandon, or bollinger?

enidd (pointng at the menu): this one, a buck’s fizz.

waiter: (slowly) yes, moet and chandon, or bollinger?

enidd: (muttering to the man) why doesn’t he just admit they’re out of buck’s fizz? people never like to say no in these countries. i suppose i’ll have to have a champagne then. (to the waiter) bollinger then, please.

a little later, the waiter brings a glass with a sugared rim, filled a quarter-full with freshly squeezed orange juice. he places a small bottle of bollinger beside it.

enidd: thank you. (to the man) wow, what an interesting way of serving champagne they have here. that’s really thirst-quenching.

time passes. enidd and the man chat about the things that couples who have been married for almost eleven years chat about[1]. they empty their glasses.

enidd: (to waiter) another bollinger, please.

a little later, enidd’s second drink arrives. it is a plain, ordinary bollinger in a little bottle. the new glass is empty - no orange juice and no sugared rim. bah, enidd thinks. it must only be your first drink that’s special.

sad to relate, it takes enidd a full 24 hours to realise why the first drink was adorned and the second wasn’t. 24 barren hours in which she could have upped her holiday michelada consumption rate quite considerably.

do any of you read detective fiction? remember how hercule poirot can always be brought down to size by mention of the chocolate box mystery he failed to solve, back in his time in the belgian police force? well, if enidd ever bangs on too much about her mensa-level iq, just whisper “michelada” in her ear.

[1] who is going to beat whom with a rubber penguin that night and whose fault it was that they forgot to pack the fluffy handcuff set.

bienvenido (or not, as the case may be)

cacti2

enidd and the man have just returned from a little holiday in mexico. they had a lovely time, thank you. well, you know you’re going to like a country when the conversation with the immigration ossifer goes something like this:

io: hola, is this your first time in mexico?

enidd: hola! more or less, yes[1]

io: welcome! where are you from?

enidd: we’re english.

io: wonderful! crumpets! marmite! manchester united! i hope you enjoy your holiday. where are you staying?

enidd: our first night is in the hotel sangrita in san josé de cabo.

io: ah, they have live music there tonight tonight. it’s very good, a lot of fun, you must go.

enidd: sounds good, we will!

you might like to compare and contrast this with enidd and the man’s return “home” to oakland airport, where the immigration officer took their left and right fingerprints, scanned their retinas and gave them the third degree about what the man’s company was called, what it did, what his job title was, where the company was based, why they’d been to mexico, how long they’d been away and whether they’d purchased anything in mexico, then finished the interrogation off with a bollocking for not having a P-456-LIMEY-CRAP form that (apparently) they’re always supposed to take with them when they leave the united states.

“oh,” said the man. “i’ve travelled a fair bit this last year, and no-one’s asked for that one before.”

“i’ll make a note on your dossier then. you better make damn sure you take it next time, or you’ll not be allowed back into the states.”

“cheers,” said the man, under his breath. “welcome home.”

enidd gets the feeling that america has enough immigrants already, and especially doesn’t want any more english people, thanks.

[1] she had previously spent an afternoon in tijuana drinking margaritas at the hard rock café.

you’re not the only one

if you read enidd’s comments, you need to get a life. uh, enidd means you’ll know that peach invited her to have a bash at this.

it’s a scheme to put together a book for warchild, and it says this:

“We would like you to submit (to us at bloggersforcharity@yahoo.co.uk) a written piece about something you’ve been through from any aspect of your life that you want to share. It can literally be about anything: your relationships, your past, a road not taken, being a parent, an illness or your regrets etc. We’ve called it “You’re Not The Only One” to reflect the camaraderie of blogging.”

last time someone had a book thing, enidd decided all on her own which piece she should submit, and she was cruelly rejected, which led to much sobbing “i’ll never be a writer” into her pillow and excess consumption of runny cheese[1].

so this time, enidd asked for help.”the man,” she said, “which of my bloggy bits is your favourite?”

“uh, um, err,” was the response.

“which of my bloggy bits do you even remember?”

“uh, um, err, none sorry.”

disheartened, enidd is now turning to you for help, kind reader. please tell enidd if there are any of her little personal bits[2] that you think are relevant for this book and interesting enough to share.

if you’re like the man and don’t remember any, here’s a few to choose from:

they do things differently there

sometimes she wonders what it would be like to be male, but she always decides it’s easier to imagine life as a colony of hydrozoan polyps

irritable vowel system

jetlagging behind

things enidd has looked for

enidd and the false leg

after doing this, enidd realised that her most amusing bits are not at all personal, which is a pity. she will be much ruder and much funnier about the man in future posts. what the hell, he won’t remember a word she says anyway.

oh, and enidd thinks anyone reading this should submit something to peach. now. it’s all for a jolly good cause.

[1] enidd’s vice of choice - marginally better for you than crack cocaine.
[2] this means any of enidd’s stories about her life, you rude person.

st. valentine probably had more fun than enidd did on the 14th

and he had his head cut off by a roman.

actually, enidd could have done with her head being cut off – after a disease-free winter, last week she finally succumbed to the nasty cold that was laying everyone else low, and since then she has felt as miserable as a pig out of shit. add to this the fact that the man flew to barcelona on sunday (unfairly leaving enidd to cope with the tough job of getting up in the morning and other such onerous tasks), and you can see that enidd didn’t start valentine’s day in a happy mood when the alarm woke her at five thirty. yes, five thirty. in the morning. enidd volunteers on thursdays, and homeless people (most inconsiderately) still need their hot oatmeal, even if it is the festival of love and their chief washer-up[1] has a chest cold.

when enidd got home she went straight back to bed, where the man, who’d arrived back from barcelona the previous evening, was pushing up ambien-fueled z’s.

enidd didn’t re-wake to flowers, chocolates or a padded card. nor was she expecting them. as the man says, valentine’s day is just a hallmark festival. enidd and the man don’t go out to eat on that night either. as the man says, all you get is a slimmed-down dumbed-down menu aimed at people who don’t usually eat out and aren’t expecting much. if you detect a note of sour grapes in this, you might be right. enidd thinks that, for example, making your own card and cooking a romantic meal would avoid both of these problems. and huge diamonds are never a disappointment, she finds.

luckily, enidd had taken matters into her own hands and arranged some valentine-based entertainment for her and the man. she had booked them tickets to the theatre, to see a comedy improv called “how we first met,” in which the performers act out scenes from the early parts of couples’ dating lives. real couples from the audience, that is. it sounded like a hoot.

she and the man arrived at the herbst theatre, which turned out to be a big posh number near the civic center. they had a few minutes to spare so they queued to buy drinks - beer for the man, and champagne for the lady. you have to get pizzed in the theatre, it makes the plot that much clearer.

time to get to their seats – but as they handed over their tickets, a big shouty person informed them that the four of them couldn’t come in to the auditorium. it was enidd and the man only, no accompanying booze allowed.

rejected, enidd and the man found a bench in the corner of the foyer and downed their drinks quickly like sad street alcoholics. “sometimes i fucking hate america,” said the man.

“yeah,” said enidd. “it’s ironic that in a former soviet state like molvania you can do what the hell you like with your $2 champagne in its real glass glass, but in the land of the free, you’re not allowed to go in with your $8 champagne in its plastic glass.”

as it turned out, enidd and the man would have been better off staying in the foyer and ordering another round or six. “how we first met” combined the worst of big brother with the best of sitting in the dentist’s surgery waiting for root canal work. the show worked like this: five couples from the audience had been pre-chosen from their answers to an email questionnaire. enidd finds it hard to imagine that these were the five most exciting relationships in san francisco. to be a bit bleedin’ obvious, none were gay[2], none were mixed race and none had a huge age gap. to be less bleedin’ obvious, nobody met on a bus trip through africa, nobody met while belly dancing on the 7:56 to menlo park, and nobody met when the girl’s previous boyfriend jumped out of a london bus and tried to run them over[3]. these people met in bars, where they though the other person looked cute and phone numbers were exchanged. the end. and thus the reality show dragged on - a endless interview with the five couples in the front row, with very little improv and even less humour.

the audience loved it. the lesbians stopped kissing and started screaming “ooooo” at any tense moments in the story - like for example, when he forgot her phone number and took three days to call her because he had to call another friend to get it[4]. and as the audience reaction grew hotter, enidd and the man grew colder. they sat in their little bubble of britishness, feeling more and more alienated. they hadn’t come to see daytime tv, or read blogs[5]. they’d come for a laugh.

“are you enjoying this?” enidd asked.

“no,” said the man.

so they sneaked out through the side exit and walked back to the car, whinging about how the show had promised more than it delivered, and how much money they’d wasted.

when they got to their car, they found that the driver’s side window had been smashed, and their gps unit stolen from the dashboard. there was a note on the windscreen saying, “happy valentine’s day from the down-and-outs of the tenderloin.”[6]


[1] well, second-in-command washer-up, but it doesn’t have the same ring.
[2] except the two lesbian couples beside and behind enidd and the man, who snogged, continually and slurpily.
[3] this is enidd’s story, in a nutshell. she could spin it out, pioneer woman style, but she thinks it’s more “car wheels to enidd squeals” than black heels to tractor wheels.
[4] this example is true
[5] ironic, huh? just keep reading, there’s no side exit from enidd’s pages.
[6] not really. not really the note, the car window really was smashed.

the pain in spain is mainly in the saying

395458654d712d6e6f6c7850354c562d734841-100x100-0-0enidd may have mentioned that the mission, where she lives, is a latino area. this is a good thing, because sometimes you get a bit tired of america, and when you do, you walk down the road to 24th street and you’re in nicaragua.

and when you buy your fruit and veg on 24th street, you notice that many of the people behind the counters of the shops there don’t speak english, or even american, and you have to resort to your traditional british language skills, like this:

salesperson: “sí, señora.”

enidd: “A POUND OF ORANGES PLEASE.”

salesperson: “¿Algo más?”[1]

enidd: “TWO POUNDS OF TOMATOES AND A LEMON.”

because whatever their native language, everyone in the world understands you if you speak in VERY SLOW CAPITALS.

being a bit of a perfectionist, enidd decided that she ought to learn to communicate with her local vendors in their own language. she borrowed a CD called “how to learn spanish in 44 cheese-based lessons” from la cubana gringa, and carefully stored it out of harm’s way on top of the bookcase in her study. week after week went by, and the cheese-based lessons grew dustier and dustier. strange to say, this novel method of language acquisition did not result in an increase in enidd’s spanish vocabulary or an improvement in her grammar.

except – it did. by osmosis[2], presumably, because now as she walks the streets of the mission, enidd can understand any spanish signs that dare to cross her path. their meanings are as transparent as the man’s excuses when he gets home late from work smelling of beer and claims to have been in “a board meeting”. and this makes enidd irate. not the beer-based excuse - well, not just that. she is also very cross because we english-speakers are being ripped off by evil, money-grabbing latino teachers who pretend that spanish is a foreign language when really it is english with a sing-song accent and some fancy punctuation. so, anglophone, throw the scales from your eyes, go into the world, and translate!

um, like this…

aqui se habla espanol
who has his own spaniel?

tomados de la mano
hand-held tomatoes.

matafuego
the bullfighter is running away.

cuidado perro peligrosso
which father threw a stone at the fat pelican?

oficina de objectos perdidos
office for objects that are damned for all eternity

envios de dinero
fancy a bite to eat?

duche de emergencia
the best ice-cream flavour for those moments when nothing is going right

no fumar, no producir llamas, no chispas de fuego
no smoking, no llama production, no barbeque-flavour crisps

despacho de billetes
a cold soup made from wild mushrooms

[1] this may not be real spanish, but it doesn’t matter so long as you get the dinky little upside-down question mark in first.
[2] yeah, through the air. this isn’t science, it’s art.

sweet and sour wine

Picture 1time for a tale of molvania.

yonks ago, carpetblogger blogged a wine blog that reminded enidd of one of her earliest wine experiences in molvania. she and the man had only been in the country a week or so, and were living at the big white house in the snow. so far, they’d only drunk georgian saparavi, because it was recommended by everyone - lawrence of australia, all the man’s colleagues, the postman, the woman who let her goats eat their front lawn, lenin, hoohah (the man’s boss) and god[1].

at their next visit to the supermarket, enidd said, “this isn’t right. we should drink the local stuff.”

“yeah,” said the man, “and we can save a bit of money too.”[2]

so being of one (unsound) mind, they added five different bottles of molvania’s finest to the trolley.

the very next night, enidd served up a nice steak[3], and the man opened the most expensive bottle (£1.50). he poured each of them a glass. the wine was deep red and looked like the perfect antidote to another day battling with a boiler which found it preferable to display “ERROR: F19″ than put out any heat. but, sadly, when they sipped they knew that the wine had all the depth and character of battery acid.

when they’d finished coughing up some presumably unnecessary internal organs, and soothed their poor throats with cold water, enidd opened the second bottle (£1). you can see where this is going. hard though it is to believe it, the second wine was marginally more acidic than the first.

desperate for some alchohol to take the chill off the house and their lives, they opened a third bottle, a fourth bottle, and finally the bottle that cost 30p and glowed in the dark.

“never mind,” said enidd, as they put the kettle on for a nice cup of tea. “i’ll make a massive stew tomorrow and freeze some of it.”

enidd did make a stew. she slowly fried some onions and garlic in olive oil, chopped a kilo or two of stewing beef, added the two most expensive bottles of wine and a bouquet garni and let it all simmer for a few hours while she chipped some ice from the inside of her office window.

Iceinside

As the dinner hour approached, she tasted the stew before seasoning it - and her face turned inside out. this wasn’t boeuf bourguignonne, it was boeuf vinaigrette.

what to do? there was no other meat in the house and the nearest shop was two dark, snowy kilometres away. the only thing that she think of was add a shedload of sugar and tomato paste and claim she’d always intended to make a sweet and sour. a wiser tactic would have been to dump the whole lot in the bin and get a taxi into town.

oh, and mum, if you think enidd wasted the other three bottles of wine, let her assure you she didn’t. she poured the leftovers on the front steps and they didn’t freeze over for a month.

[1] the last two are not the same person, although at times it was hard to believe it.
[2] at the time they’d not been paid for quite a while and georgian saparavi was at least £8 a bottle.
[3] well, a steak, anyway.

fortune cookies and 4×4s

last weekend enidd and the man went out to see a comedy with their old mate from way back, dr. rave, and his american lady-pal, jennifun. afterwards the four of them ate a (sadly rather poor) chinese meal together. before they’d even laid their chopsticks down, the owner of the restaurant was slapping the bill on the table[1] and offering the fortune cookies. they each took one, and jennifun suggested that it was quite a giggle to read your fortune out loud and append the words “in bed”. so, for your amusement and delight this wet tuesday, here are the real and actual fortunes from last friday:

jennifun: seek advice from an octogenarian (in bed).
dr rave: any troubles you may have will pass very shortly (in bed).
the man: travelling to the south will bring you unexpected happiness (in bed)[2]
enidd: no obstacles will stand in the way of your success this month (in bed)

this reminded enidd of a similar game, invented by her pop star pal juvation. he knows a funny thing about about 4×4s. no, not that they’re driven by fancy ladies in designer coats who think wellingtons are a beef dish and far too fattening if you want to fit into your size 0 jeans. well, not just that.

juvation suggests that it is always quite amusing to take the name of a 4×4, any 4×4, and prefix it with the word “anal”.

for example, ford makes the explorer and the escape, and land rover makes the discovery.

[1] it was after ten o’clock, and san francisco, as enidd has said before, is the city that likes to go to bed early with a nice cocoa.
[2] don’t be mucky

rhetorical questions

does sitting in the deep-freeze make you feel a bit chilly?

does paddling in the sea make your feet wet?

does running for the bus make your heart beat faster?

does drinking four white wines, three leg-overs and a snakebite at the office party result in a pounding headache, a photocopy of your bum and a sense of regret?

and does this recent reversal have anything to do with this appalling state of affairs?

it’s not april 1st, is it?

you probably didn’t believe enidd when she banged on a bit about how lardy american food is. in fact, you probably thought she invented items like “otis spunkmeyer soft-baked fudge peanut fluff cookies” and “zingtastic lime-crunch cheese string”.

you’re right, she did. but here’s one she didn’t invent. enidd presents to you… <drum roll> …the domino’s oreo dessert pizza.

can you imagine actually wanting to eat one of these *after* you’ve eaten a 12-inch main-course pizza dripping with cheese? actually, can you imagine wanting to *eat* one of these?

enidd’s top pizza predictions for 2008 are the the after-dessert pizza: a tiny five-incher topped with chocolate truffles, brandy and a cup of espresso, and the appetiser pizza, a ten-incher topped with soup.