helenandjo.com

This morning I did one of my least favourite things in the whole world – going to see my GP. I have been suffering from ear ache for the past three weeks and bravely decided that maybe three weeks was quite a long time to live in pain and misery. Anyway, it seems I don’t have ear ache at all but “temporal mandibular joint disorder” – symptoms include ear ache, tinnitus (hearing the Pizza Factory everywhere I go), hearing loss (why I can’t hear a word Helen says), dizziness, neck and shoulder pain and a grating jaw. As you can see I am very ill and deserve a lot of sympathy. Helen may have to give up her job in Devon to care for me. I have been prescribed a very potent wonderdrug to cure my symptoms. It’s called Ibuprofen. Add my new condition to my many exisiting medical complaints, including my blepharitis (swollen eyelids), and my dodgy knee and I am a pretty much a wreck of a human being and should probably be put down.

We haven’t had lunch news for a while so I thought it was high time we revisited this popular helenandjo.com feature. Today for lunch I had a disappointing sandwich from Pret a Schmanger. It was a roast carrot and hummus baguette and sounded nice but it provided an unsatisfactory sandwich experience due to a range of factors:

1) The chunks of carrot were too big

2) They did not seem very roasted to me, just raw and big

3) The baguette was too solid and hard to chew

4) It had been ‘designed’ by some kind of chef, which may explain below

5) Worst of all this sandwich cost £2.99, which is incredibly expensive for some lumps of carrot in bread

This is proof that I should not have deviated from my normal sandwich-of-choice – the eggwich, which is soft, tasty and, best of all, CHEAP although I did read a worrying newspaper article recently that said some shops were stopping doing eggwiches due to a dramatic rise in the price of eggs.

…is another woman’s treasure. I participated in our residents’ assocation’s annual “dump run” yesterday and came away with plenty of booty, including a rusty garden fork. Why anyone would throw that away is beyond me as it is the perfect prop for one of the two scarecrows Helenandi are making to go on the allotment – Scarehelen and Scarejo. I also obtained three perfectly good plastic storages boxes for mum to use in the attic AND a small, wooden table, which I will paint – all in all a good haul.

Not only is Pricesnipper lowering the tone of our neighbourhood with its shoddy approach to landscape gardening and litter, but it seems the shop is also luring ne’erdowells. I was walking across the Civic Centre car park last night, marvelling at the sight of a vehicle actually using the electric car charging column, when a man alerted me to the presence of “two crackheads outside the corner shop” and urged me to watch out. I thanked him for his warning and proceeded with caution but the crackheads must have gone by the time I got there and I was not molested in any way. I entirely blame Pricesnipper for attracting drug addicts to my road. If the flowerbeds outside were neat and free of litter then I am sure we would only get nice middle class alcoholics like me.

The fact our neighbourhood is sliding downhill makes me wonder what on earth Helenandi are doing putting in an offer for upstairs – for that is what we have done, dear readers. We could soon be rulers of our entire kingdom. The Snorer would be banished, we would claim the bottom of the back garden, and we would ensure no plastic bags found their way into the  blue recycling wheelie bin ever again. It would be a dream come true. However, it all depends on the weasel Lemming accepting our reasonable offer, which he won’t because he imagines upstairs is worth half a million pounds even though it is covered in lashings of artex. We shall see.

I’ve been to an important meeting this afternoon with lots of high powered people who I’d probably like to work with.

My rule at this meeting is that I have to say at least two things to justify my presence there. They’re not normally two very interesting things but I feel pleased when I manage them.

After I left the meeting I went to a clothes shop and was trying on some stuff when I realised that I had a bit of tinfoil stuck in my top. This must have got there when I was wrapping up my sandwich for the train. Oh dear. I hope none of the important people noticed it while I was making one of my two points.

In recent weeks, I have been in regular contact with the pizza factory across the railway line from us to complain about a ringing/hissing sound that bothers me when I am lying in bed at night. Helenandi were off to Spales for a couple of nights and I was looking forward to a bit of peace and quiet. I went to bed, sank down into the pillows and prepared to sleep, perchance to dream, when I realised something was not right. I could hear the bloody pizza factory! Even with all its hissing, rattling and roaring, I knew that even the pizza factory was not loud enough to penetrate into the Spelsh countryside all the way from Sparrow. It seems some of the ringing I have been complaining so bitterly about is in my own ears! However, not ALL of the noise is from inside my head so I will continue with my campaign. The factory have had a “contractor” out, so they inform me, to “look at ideas”.

Joandi have been herding lambs today. Here we are, just like Mary (whohadalittlelamb). Jo’s lamb has got milk on its head.  My lamb is called Tractor.  He was named by some children.  Jo’s was called Bubo.

I have not been impressed with childkind of late. In recent weeks no less than two small children have questioned my gender identity and that has made me cross. However, today I met a sensible child in the street: “Hello, smart lady,” said the child. I smiled at it. “Smart lady!” it repeated. This child clearly has a bright future. Although how come children are always saying things to me? I seem to be a magnet for both children AND mentals. The other day I met our neighbour “Spider” walking along the road. He was shouting “F**king shut up! F**king shut up!” seemingly to no one in particular. A few minutes later I met Trousers-falling-down-man who stopped and said something to me that I couldn’t hear because I was listening to a rap backing track on my i-device. Probably for the best. And the other night I said hello to Mental Man, which was a mistake because it set him off: “Finally!” he shouted. “Finally she cheers up! At last! She’s happy! Finally! She’s smiling! Hooray!” It seems he has been concerned about my mental health, which is nice.

I despair of humanity sometimes, or rather, nearly all the time. SOMEONE has been harvesting the daffodils that I spent ages planting under trees and lampposts in our street. The daffodils were for all to enjoy and the bulbs were funded by our residents’ association. But some measly daffodil thief has been going along selfishly gathering them up, no doubt to put in a vase and enjoy in the privacy of their own home or possibly to give to a loved one because they are too stingy to buy their own even though they are only a £1 a bunch in Evil Besco. I am MEGA-ANNOYED! There are barely any blooms left. I might have to go and hide behind a lamppost in an attempt to catch the thief red-handed, or more accurately, yellow-handed. What would Wordsworth say? If he happened to be wandering around Sparrow’s civic quarter he would write a poem that went:

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er a mixed residential/light industrial zone

When all at once I spied NOTHING to write home about

The End

You may recall me announcing the thrilling news that a bee had moved into our bee box. Inspired by the success of our first bee box in providing comfortable, affordable homes to lone bees, we installed a second bee box in the hope of attracting a second bee. Imagine our excitement when not long after the new bee appartments went up, we peeked inside to see a BEE! This was incredible – two bees!! However, then we checked the first bee box and it was bee-less. Basically, we think the first bee had moved from its old flat in the old bee box into a new flat in the new block. You can understand why – Who wouldn’t want a smart new home if one was on offer? – but it was disappointing nonetheless. Anyway, here is a picture of me pointing to the new bee box when I thought we had a new bee instead of a boring beecycled bee.