Why I Shouldn’t Be Left Alone on a Saturday Night

Posted on January 26, 2014 by suzie81speaks

The Bloke has gone ‘oop North’ to visit his mother, so I’ve had the house to myself for the weekend. While I always miss him when he isn’t here, I don’t mind admitting that I was looking forward to spending a little bit of time alone – it has been quite a stressful couple of weeks at work and it was the perfect opportunity to catch up on some much needed ‘me’ time.

I started with good intentions – I did a bit of blogging, washed some clothes and met my best friend in the local pub for lunch. However, after consuming what felt like my entire bodyweight in veggie burger, I returned home with an overwhelming feeling of exhaustion and lost all motivation to do anything but lie on the couch and watch Columbo, which seems to still be a main staple of British television over the weekends. I fell asleep, and thankfully I had set an alarm on my phone to remind me to go and give Daisy, my diabetic cat, her insulin injection and then returned to my couch position, waking a few hours later. I worked out that I must had slept for about six hours in total and felt relaxed.

I decided that I was going to have a girlie night in, so I went to the supermarket and purchased various snacky treats to accompany a chick flick (yet to be chosen at this point) that would leave me feeling warm and fuzzy and happy with the world. The trip turned out to be quite an eventful one – a young couple were having a screaming argument, a middle – aged couple were kissing in the doorway, preventing anyone from getting past and forcing several people to cough and offer an awkward ‘excuse me,’ a man vomited on the pavement across the road and there were several young women who had obviously planned to spend their Saturday night in a similar way to me, their baskets filled with wine, pizza and chocolate. I live in a classy area, clearly.

Upon my return I temporarily forgot that I am 32 years old and decided to watch ‘A Walk To Remember,’ knowing only that it was a teen – flick. However, from the rave reviews it has received from some of my students I expected it to be a generic, cutesy film that would make me smile and finish with a ‘happy ever after.’ I was also swayed by the fact that it starred the lovely Shane West, who I have developed an appreciation for after watching him in several seasons of ‘Nikita.’ I then planned to have a hot bath and an early night to try and catch up on more sleep that I have missed over the last week.

How wrong I was.

At the risk of giving spoilers, there was no happy ever after and at the end of the film I found myself sobbing like a baby onto the head of a previously sleeping, rather disgruntled cat that had curled up on my lap. My expected feeling of warm and fuzzy had been replaced with a sense of temporary despair. I kicked myself as I swore that I wouldn’t do this to myself again after watching Steel Magnolias and flashes of the opening sequence to ‘Bridget Jones’ kept popping into my head as I realised that I was sitting alone on a Saturday night in my pyjamas, surrounded by confectionary wrappers and crying at one of the most depressing and utterly heartbreaking films I have ever seen.

Unfortunately, the marathon sleeping session that I had experienced during the day, combined with the consumption of a ridiculously high quantity of sugar resulted in me being wide awake, pretty much for the rest of the night. At 3.00am I gave up and put a DVD of Family Guy on, and this must have worked as my alarm woke me up at 5.45am, reminding me to go and inject the cat. However, after about three hours sleep I now feel more tired than I did yesterday…

Next time, the only film I’m watching will be Avengers Assemble…

You can also find me on Twitter and Tumblr @Suzie81blog…

Old Friends, Cocktails, Dancing and Sore Feet

Posted on January 19, 2014 by suzie81speaks

It’s the weekend – I’m happy!

One of my (many) faults is that I am useless at keeping in regular contact with people. I always have good intentions, but life gets in the way.

Luckily, I am blessed with very understanding and patient friends.

From the age of 16-18 I completed my A Levels at a Sixth Form College that was miles away from where I lived, which required me to get four buses a day. My music class was full of talented young people and we bonded instantly. We performed in concerts, went out together in a large group, went on holiday together, stayed at each others houses and got to know each others families.

After our qualification had finished we all went our separate ways to various parts of the country, but managed to remain in contact. I was there when LR met the man that she would eventually marry, I attended their hen parties and weddings, some of them visited me in Birmingham (one of those visits was to surprise me on my 30th birthday) and I’ve travelled up to Leeds on a few occasions with them.

However, over the last few years I have been rubbish – they have consistently invited me out several times a year and I have always had to cancel at the last minute. So, when I received a message just before New Year, I was determined to go. I thought that fate was conspiring against me with the rather intense inspection I had at work, but by Saturday morning I had pulled myself together and was on an early train ‘oop North’ with my overnight bag and a feeling of excitement about the night ahead. I was staying at my Mum’s so it was a good opportunity to see her too…

Bolton Bus Station: It’s what horror movies are made of…

As I still haven’t learned to drive, despite being 32 years old, I had arranged with one of the girls that she would pick me up at the bus station near to where we attended college, which meant that I had to undertake the same bus route that I did every day as a teenager. Standing in Bolton Bus Station by myself for the first time in 14 years was a strange experience – it’s a terrifying place and despite the total familiarity I had I couldn’t help feel a sense of utter paranoia that a mad axe murderer was going to jump out at me.

Luckily, I arrived in record time as the driver went so fast he clearly had dreams of becoming a racing car driver, I met my friend without any issues and very soon I was sitting around a table in a beautiful restaurant (which also had a dance floor – I was delighted) with a group of very glamorous, beautiful women who immediately made me realise that I was hugely underdressed. (I can never seem to get it right).

My friend AH getting into the spirit of things…

It was a fabulous night and exactly what I needed after a very stressful week. We ate, talked, reminisced, danced and shared cocktails. I laughed so much that my face and stomach muscles hurt. I was 18 years old again – despite the fact that most of them are now engaged, married and parents to young children I found myself on the dance floor with the same people that I knew all those years ago. We were the last to leave and I arrived back at my mum’s house at about 2.30am, which I haven’t done in a long time.

I’m feeling a little delicate today, my feet are extremely sore, (despite the fact that I wore flat shoes) and I’m on a train back down to Birmingham where I plan to spend the rest of the day attempting to recover…

Hope that you’ve had a good weekend!

Don’t forget to check out the winners of my Week 2 New Year competition – their buttons are on the sidebar of the blog – this is your last chance before they change!!

You can also find me on Twitter and Tumblr @Suzie81

A Wonderful Wimbledon Weekend

Posted on July 7, 2013 by suzie81speaks

This weekend has been fabulous. After a LONG week of shows in the evening, on top of a full teaching timetable and having to do both with a really nasty head cold, I hit Friday night with a feeling of utter exhaustion and relief that the weekend was here. I certainly made sure that I enjoyed myself:

On Friday night I went to the pub with my friend NW for a well-deserved drink. Me and The Bloke then watched all our favourite TV shows that we’d missed over the week: Hart of Dixie, Big Bang Theory, The Apprentice, For The Love Of Dogs etc.

I slept until 9.30 on Saturday morning. The Bloke brought me breakfast in bed and then went into town. My hayfever has been quite bad, so I walked to the chemist in glorious sunshine and got antihistamines. The rest of the afternoon was spent blogging and sleeping.

The Bloke returned with my favourite ice-cream: Cookies and Cream Haagen Dazs I ate it whilst watching ‘OZ’, which I quite enjoyed.

I slept in until 8.30am on Sunday morning. I made us breakfast, and then we went to watch Despicable Me 2 at the cinemas, which was hilarious. I love the minions.

We then had lunch at Frankie and Benny’s, joined NW at the pub again where we sat in the beer garden and listened to a live blues band and Formula 1 on the TV outside, returned home, put some washing out and spent the rest of the day relaxing.

To add to it further, for the first time in 77 years, a Brit, Andy Murray, won Wimbledon. Like I felt pride for our Olympians in London last year, I’m feeling the same pride for him today. He thoroughly deserved it.

This is what weekends are made for. This level of sunshine and heat is rare in the UK and everybody was outside enjoying themselves. The only trouble is that it makes me less than enthusiastic about work tomorrow…