Barbie dolls and Lightbulbs

The more I think about it, the more I comprehend just how wierd a child I was.

A comment that Over the Moon posted on Bag Lady regarding those strange lady loo-roll warmers reminded me of something similar I attempted to do DIY-style aged 6 or so.

I wanted a doll in a big crinoline style dress. I only had the despised modern day barbie dolls. So, in entreprenurial style I attempted to make my own. I thought that my big round wire lightshade frame would make an admirable hoop, and the material shade itself a divinely pink dress. I removed the lightshade (presumably vertigo hadn't kicked in and crippled me the way it has now) and proceeded.

Barbie was quickly stripped and shoved in the top of the frame.

She wouldn't fit so I cut her legs off.

I moulded the 'dress' around her and after quiet satisfaction lasting circa 30 seconds decided that she was a bit boring. I thought that since I had used a lightshade to create Victorian Dream Barbie, I could use her as a novelty lightshade.

I tried attaching her as before but her torso was in the way of where the bulb and cord ought to be, so I got some string and hung the lampshade upside down from the lightbulb in an uplighter effect. Her dress fell immediately away from the wire frame so I hastily tucked the loose bits around the frame to hold it in place - which it did for about a day.

Due to gravity, after a couple of days her head fell off, but I was bored of her by then and forgot about it.

A week or so later my father came in my room to give me dinner and noticed the lampshade. This is what he saw:

A decapitated doll hung upside down with dingy pink material covering her chest, leaving a clear view of the rest of the body trapped inside a torture chamber of wire, obscenely framing a melted stump of groin, the legs having been chopped off sometime previously.

Daddy didn't say much, just removed the grotesque, by this time dusty, figure and replaced the lampshade into its original setting. Later on he gave me a yoghurt.

I don't think he ever told my mother though.

Go-Live!!!

I'm not sure what I can and can't say as everything I deal with is under Restricted Commercial, but - I would just like to announce that....(drum roll, please).....

WE HAVE GONE LIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

AND, we've done so successfully. After an initial hiccup the software worked smoothly, my end-users (after a swift refresher training session from me) whizzed through the applications and sauntered away from their computers with - I have to say - a bit of a smug grin really.

I have had the enormous satisfaction of seeing the past 1 and a half years of my life come to fruition.

SO, can I just give a big two fingers up and a yelled out '{four-letter word} you!' to:

The Times
The Guardian
The BBC
The Sun
HSJ
The British Medical Association
E-Health Insider

in fact, all of you c#*!s who with your inflammatory and sensationalist (and most of the time downright inaccurate and false) journalism managed to make my life so much more difficult, unpleasant and stressful during this period. I hope you all get squished in your own print press.

Bag Lady

Helloooo out there?

Anyone?

Hello?

Ah yes, as has been pointed out to me, I've been incommunicado recently due to my new job being incrediably stressful and busy (in a good way - I think the grey hairs really suit me) and the fact that I have been turfed out of my lovely Edwardian 3 double bedroom house and into a late Victorian (hiss, you should see the fireplace) 1 bed flat.

Actually, its a nice flat with a pretty view across Victoria Park, but it is still 2 bedrooms, a staircase, a toilet, a garden and most importantly a loft down on my last place. Many people would say 'Where's the problem? You are one person, you have a one person place, I see no issue' and they would be wrong so wrong! Moving the piano was a pain but do-able, but my dears! The living room resembles a jumble sale after a particularly militant set of Grannies have been let loose on it and my kitchen surfaces are currently waving the white flag after armies of spice and herb jars went on the march, as if over enemy terrain. I feel like I've put my new home under siege - just shove some laurel leaves on my head and call me Napoleon, I suppose.

Do you want to know what all this stuff is made up of? Well, here's an extract from an email I sent my friend:

Clothes
11 bin bags full
3 large suitcases
2 small suitcases
1 gargantuan blue holdall (Katrina has one so she knows how big they are)
1 under-the-bed clothes storage thingy

Shoes
7 shoeboxes (filled)
3 bootboxes (filled)
4 (very) large bags filled with approx. 35 pairs

Books
5 boxes
2 medium suitcases
1 small suitcase

Practical items
1 rather small cardboard box

Its not good is it?

So, I'm elegantly clothed and shod, my mind has stimulation aplenty, but bugger me if I can find where I've put the bog roll.