An Important Message From The Police To Women

An important message from the Police - please pass to all the women you know.....

This actually happened a few weeks ago on the NEWPORT PAGNELL SERVICES!!!

It was early evening, and a young girl was watching the television at home. Her parents had left her alone, and she heard a strange noise coming from the television set. Soon she was sucked into a portal into another dimension. When her parents called the police, they told the family "Get out of the house, immediately, as the Beast is coming". This just happened to a girl last week. Please be careful when buying your house, and ALWAYS make sure it is not built on an INDIAN BURIAL GROUND to prevent this from happening to you. Tell others. This may save a life.

Something similar to this happened at the Aldi in Newport recently, but luckily the cashier was a trained spirit guide. Please be aware of what's going on around you.

FROM THE MET POLICE
In light of the recent murders at Grover's Mill, I think it is important to read the following info for your own safety. Things WOMMEN should know to stay safe:

1. if a Martian War Machine confronts you, DO NOT APPROACH IT WAVING A FLAG. It is probably more interested in Pastor Nathaniel than you, and it will go for the priest first. RUN LIKE MAD IN THE OTHER DIRECTION!

2. Tip from HMS ThunderChild: Do not use weapons on the Martians. They are no better than bows and arrows against the lightning!

3. if you are being hunted through a maze in winter, hide by retracing your steps. Jack won't be able to see what you've done. This can save lives.

4. Women have a tendency to go into car parks after shopping, pilates, visiting nail salons, etc. DON'T DO THIS! A predator could be watching you and this is the perfect opportunity for them to ask you to help them carry a sofa into an unmarked van. Do not do this!!! If asked, IT PUTS THE LOTION ON ITS SKIN

5. A few notes about getting into your car in car park:
a) Be aware: look around you, Check the passenger side floor for midgets with knives (this has happened)
b) Do not use your car for having premarital sex. Especially not if it is Hallowe'en.
c) If a man with knives for hands is sitting near your car, you may want to get guard/policeman to walk you back out. They will most likely die first. IT IS ALWAYS BETTER TO BE SAFE THAN SORRY.

6. NEVER say the Candyman's name more than twice.

7. if you're babysitting and the phone rings, DO NOT ANSWER IT. The killer is already inside the house.

8. if the terminator has a gun and you are not under his control, ALWAYS RUN FOR THE NEAREST TRUCK! However, even if you run him over, you will not hit a vital organ and the terminator will only keep on coming.

9. As women, we are always trying to be sympathetic:
STOP IT! It may get your blood drained. Count Dracula, the serial killer, was a good-looking, well educated man, who ALWAYS played on the sympathies of unsuspecting women, He walked with a cane, wore a cloak, and often asked if you could hear "the children of the night".

10. Another safety point:
A woman was recently in an escape shuttle near Nuneaton. She thought she was in there alone and then noticed her cat was behaving strangely. Thinking quickly, she was able to save the life of herself and the cat by ejecting the alien lifeform into space. By thinking quickly and using common sense she was able to save a cat's life.

A candle is not dimmed by lighting another candle. Send this to any woman you know who may need to be reminded that the world is out to get them.
Someone will always send this kind of batshit scaremongering nonsense on thinking that hey, it's better to be safe than sorry.

Also, if you don't forward this on within SEVEN DAYS a creepy Japanese girl will kill you.

Alas, our Underground City is closed

I took my boyfriend to Turkey. This was a test. Of what, I don't really know. There are some places that, once you discover, you can't stop talking about - Glasgow in the rain, the shores of a Loch, a clean toilet in India... and pretty much all of Turkey.

I prepared carefully. I got a Turkish teacher to try and get my Turkish working again. She tried. She failed. I was, as ever, fine in restaurants, if everyone spoke slowly.

But still - Turkey was very Turkey. Our first hotel claimed to have a private beach. It turned out to have no electricity and be a mile inland, so we just wandered around. My boyfriend saw a hotel in the grounds of an old Roman temple. How wonderful, I thought, but not for the likes of us.  "Can we stay there?" he asked. And so we did.

We went to Cappadocia. I'm now too old for a nightbus to Cappadocia and can't believe I used to do this with my parents when they were still in their 60s. The seats are more comfortable, the children are better behaved than ever, but they turn the lights on more. Just when you finally think that some sleep will come, they slam them on, and you're in a petrol station in the 1970s being shouted at by a large woman smoking by a petrol pump. She's your driver. So you get off and go for a walk.

Cappadocia is still the best place in the world. And the oddest. A geographical oddity that is soaked in cash. They have neat pavement. The young men drive sportscars. There's a lidl (only they call it Bim, pronounced "bum"). Travel a few miles in either direction and you get "the real Turkey" - villages where life goes on pretty much as normal, with thousand-year old buildings neatly turned into cattlesheds. But the tiny village of Goreme is still awash with tourists. These are farmers, so they're used to dealing with cattle. Kindly and humanely the cattle are loaded into white vans and taken to wherever they can be milked of some more of their cash.

Numan's hotel was run by Afghan refugees. To think of all the horrors they'd been through in order to sit around listening to tourists discussing which hot air balloon trip to take. We did, by the way, do a hot air balloon. It was a terrifying hour with each of us worrying the other was about to propose. 

Mostly, I just love it there. I love living in a cave. A cave with plumbing and wifi, with a balcony with the best view in the world, that you can sit on at night and read books while the valley gets on with being the most beautiful thing on Earth. "Oh, just try it in Winter," said Numan. Well, I think I'd like to.

Being in my 30s, I now can't go on holiday anywhere without wondering what the property prices are. Turns out, a decade ago, you could buy a cave complex for a steal. Even now, my London flat could get me a 30-room cave. That's room for a lot of trains sets and cats. It's practically an underground city.

Talking of underground cities, I wanted to show my boyfriend one of the ones "off the beaten track". Because that's simple tourist snobbery. The best way seemed to be to go to a town and get a cab. We went to the town. We stood in a car park. We asked where the taxi rank was. The car park attendant shrugged and phoned his dad.

So it was that we became a Family Outing To The Underground City. Dad and Youngest Son in the front. Boyfriend and me in the back. "Do you speak English?" the dad asked in perfect English. This turned out to be the only English he knew. He was taking us to the next village which, last time, had had an undergound city. We got there. Passersby shrugged and smiled "Alas, our Underground City is closed" (to be boring, the Turkish word for "alas" is "maalesef" which does the job very well). And so it was. You can, it turns out, padlock an underground city. Why, I don't know. Maybe the man with the key was on holiday.

It doesn't matter, we said. These things happen. It's all fun. We laughed. But Dad and Youngest Son did not laugh. We can, Youngest said, take you back. Or, there's another underground city... And so we bombed on into the middle of nowhere. Valleys came and went. Street signs gave up. Little ladies toiled in the baking afternoon at empty fields while their husbands sat in tea gardens. And suddenly, carved into the cliffs were a nest of roman tombs. Little perfect temples. Just there. Next to a tea garden. And a handpainted sign saying "Undergound City".

And it was perfect. Being led round an underground city by a man who, by rights, should be running his tea shop, but really wanted to show off his ancient wine press. These things are good.

Travelling with a vegetarian in Turkey was either the best way to get ripped off, or a delight. We gave up on proper restaurants with their oily, thoughtlessly rude waiters and instead were oily and thoughtlessly rude to puzzled chefs in small canteens. Suddenly Turkey stops being expensive. You can still get a meal for two for about £6 and not want to eat for days. And I got very good at quickly picking the meat out of the broad bean stew and giving it to a cat. This is the best thing about Turkey - every restaurant has a cat. If it doesn't, don't eat there. Cats know.

Istanbul I got wrong again. I think if I lived in Istanbul, I'd enjoy it. As a tourist, I get Istanbul wrong like some people get email wrong. Half of it was closed. The other half was crowded - even the Cistern is unbearable now Dan Brown's mentioned it. I can't get it right. I once tried to get a taxi to a chic club near Taksim. I ended up standing on a roundabout. Yes, I'd tried to go clubbing on a roundabout.

When people say "Leaving our holiday was the hardest thing about it" they often mean it fondly. But with Istanbul it's true. They have a direct tram to the airport (you have to change five times). And even then, Ataturk Airport has won an award - it's the least punctual airport (outside China). 38% of planes leave on time. Several hundred flights a week are cancelled. You can buy a bottle of vodka in duty free for the same price as two cups of tea. And it was very, very tempting.

Of course, the boyfriend wants to go back. He fancies studying the sufis, going to a caravanserai, and going along the Black Sea. I think that'll be marvellous. I'm already looking forward to ordering meals very slowly.

The 25 Simple Steps To Buying Theatre Tickets Online

Is there any worse online booking experience than buying Theatre Tickets? It fails the GCSE French usability test. Namely, is the actual experience as easy as it would be in a basic French textbook?

MOI: Bonjour. Avez-vous deux billets por Mercredi?
THEM: Oui. Neuf francs, s'il vous plait.
MOI: Voila. Au revoir.

Here is how it goes.

1. BEHOLD OUR THEATRE WEBSITE FRONT PAGE. We have BELLS and we have WHISTLES!
   
2. [a long time later] Congratulations, you've finally found a page about the play you want to see.
   
3. [you've had shorter relationships later] You've found the “Book Tickets” button.
   
4. You select the night you'd like to see the play.
   
5. [You may now find yourself on someone else's website entirely. Lucky you]
   
6. Select the type of ticket you want. No, not that type, stupid.
   
   
   
   
7. You may not want to select a seat, but don't worry, we've turned our theatre into a flythrough of the Death Star. You must now steer through the stalls in order to find your two seats.
8. Keep an eye on the colour code. LIGHT GREY means available. SLIGHTLY LIGHTER GREY means unavailable.
   
9. Done?
   
10. Oh, those seats weren't available after all. TRY AGAIN.
    
11. Okay. Would you like to pay?
    
12. Fine. We'd need you to register. No, I know you only come here every ten years, but we need you to register.
    
13. Uh-Oh, looks like we made you register last time you came to see a play here in 2001. We need you to remember the password.
    
14. Don't worry, we've emailed it to you.
    
15. Email turned up? Good. Sadly, we'll need you to choose a new password before you go any further. To confuse you next time you come here.
    
16. Hello again. You're now registered.
    
17. There we go. Now, I'm afraid you'll need to repeat steps 4-11. See you in a bit.
    
18. Would you like to receive our email newsletter? It doesn't matter what you click, you'll receive it anyway.
    
19. Nearly there. Would you like to contribute to our Dry Rot Preservation Fund? We've thoughtfully added that on top of the ticket price. If you don't want to pay, please play Checkbox Battleships. Meanie.
    
20. Oh. And here's a booking fee. Of course there is. We've got to pay for that CG modelled Death Star somehow.
    
21. You've not read our terms and conditions, but we're going to make you say that you have. Liar.
    
22. And we're done. Now over to your bank and their 3D Security Thing.
    
23. Here's your booking code. Copy that down. And bring along your card.
    
24. For someone on the night to shrug, ask for your surname and hand you your tickets.
    
25. Alternatively, why not spend the evening in with a Take Me Out marathon? It's less painful.
    

On Being Servalan

I've always loved Servalan. She is the best character ever on television (apart from Special Agent Albert Rosenfeld). Unfortunately, for a long time it seemed that no bugger knew who she was.

When I was handed the keys to the BBC's Cult TV website, one of my first actions was to put up a gallery of pictures of Servalan. Popular as it was, it did not go down well internally. I received an email telling me she was "perhaps a bit obscure". "But it's a site about Cult TV!" I protested. Until the penny dropped that "obscure" was a euphemism. For, uh, well, um... (embarrassed whisper) ... gay.

Anyway, the point about Servalan is that, she's always amazing. She's the Blake's 7 equivalent of Doctor Who's Radiophonic Workshop. No matter how bad the surroundings, she's always making interesting noise.

I once dressed up as Servalan for a party. It was a fancy dress party. I learned a lot of things that night. Firstly, that if you do turn a broom handle into a pair of shoulder pads you will be unable to walk through doors without garrotting yourself.

Also, as no-one knew who Servalan was, most people assumed I was just doing weird drag. Or going as That Man From The Crying Game Who Was In Stargate. There are, it seems some people who should not do weird drag. Or dress up as That Man From The Crying Game Who Was In Stargate. I'm one of them.

My oldest school friend turned up to the party. He was not in fancy dress. Nor were the three Sloaney Girls he'd brought along. They took one look at a room full of people in Star Trek uniforms and Magic Roundabout characters and decided that they'd take their wine elsewhere. Somewhere where it couldn't be got at by large pink cows or men with badly-shaven legs. I rather think I lost a friend that night by being a hideous embarrassment.

Anyway, the important point is that I've now got to write for Servalan. It was a thrilling experience, and apparently the woman herself was very nice about (how disappointing. I'd have preferred it if she'd been thoroughly nasty. In heels).

I will be celebrating by not dressing up as her ever again:

The internet and the library

There's a lovely story here about The British Library wi-fi accidentally blocking Hamlet. Security experts and free speech people are quoted saying that this proves that attempts to block, filter and restrict the internet are useless.

I'm just remembering the mid-90s, when the World Wide Web was new and shiny, and it turned up on 3 terminals in the University library. I was at first baffled by this Information Superhighway. It took me a while to work out where the start of it was (why was the index called Yahoo?).

This being a library, my browsing was furtive and circumspect. I didn't even dream that it would one day be an unlimited source of breasts. I was just terrified that someone would catch me cheating as I used the search tool to find all of the references to "satire" in Horace's Art of Poetry. Surely, I thought, I could get into trouble for not actually reading a book?

No librarian came over and shushed me. I was lucky. So I became more adventurous. I found a web page about The Avengers. Amazed, I printed it out, along with a list of quotes from Press Gang. I didn't print out the Star Trek web pages. There were just too many of them - over a hundred. And anyway, they were organised in the format of a space ship, and each room needed to be explored. It was almost Virtual Reality.

One day, I was even able to look at a JPEG of Mrs Peel, right there on my screen. I was amazed. Even more so when I found the full script for Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. I maxxed out my account printing that rare treasure off (in case it vanished, or I couldn't find it again - those Uniform Resource Locators were sometimes very long and took ages to copy down, and sometimes I couldn't read my handwriting correctly).

I started to look at the WWW almost every time I visited the library. Nearly daily did I type into the Yahoo a search term with trembling fingers - of course, you didn't have to search. Yahoo also handily had about a dozen categories and subcategories, so you could find the page you wanted just by a lot of clicking (Entertainment... Television... The Avengers). The internet seemed very neatly organised, if you asked me.

And still no-one told me off. I knew I was doing wrong. Because I was in a library and looking up information for the sheer fun of it.

One day, of course, I got caught. I was staring at a list of ISBN numbers for Target Doctor Who books. I heard a tutting sound over my shoulder. It was my tutor. "Dear me," he said, "How embarrassing."

From that day on, I only ever used the internet for research. Well, until they invented cats.

Undead Neighbour On Demand

I've written before about my slightly ghoulish preoccupation with buying a neighbouring flat when the owner dies. The signs had been good - district nurse, unwatered window boxes...

Today, a Virgin Broadband man turns up and the two are stood on the balcony, laughing, drinking tea and talking about cricket. Damn, and yet, also, good for him.

The Curse Of The Freelancer

The freelancer's curse is sending politely chasing emails. You know - when someone approaches you to do something, and at first it's all "GO! GO! GO!" and then fizzles sadly out. Like an amazing one-night stand. Only, after a one-night stand, we all know the rules - you send a couple of follow up texts, cry and then move on.

With freelance projects, that's not what you do. The correct etiquette is to regularly stand outside your potential employer's window at 4am with a Mariachi band playing Mandy. At least once a week you have to send them the awful "Hey, any news?" email. And they have to send you the "No, sadly. Will keep you posted!" reply. It's sadly pointless on both sides. But them's the rules.

As my mother put it: "I don't understand. They'll get in touch at the last minute if they want it." My mother, please note, has never worked in the media. And Yet She Knows All.

Just for once, it'd be nice to say: "Hello! You know that project you said was definite a month ago, and that I should clear my schedule for? Well, I did. And since then, you know, I've heard nothing much from you. I get it. I know you're busy. I know it's probably not happening after all. But that's okay. I've got other work coming in. I'll be fine.It would have been lovely to do. More than lovely - amazing. But, these things happen. So just fire me and I can stop worrying about letting you down when it's suddenly all back on again."

But no. Instead, here I am about to type: "Hey there... any news?"

There's An App For That

I'm relearning a language before going on holiday. I downloaded an app that promised to help. I spent half an hour on it yesterday while waiting outside a phone shop.

It was bloody depressing. My experience with just like one of the recent Star Wars films.
"Ooh, this is shiny and different."
"Oh, I'm not sure about this."
"I kind of miss the old way."
"Eurgh! Eurgh! Eurgh!"
"Let's pretend this never happened."

There really is no magical secret to language learning. It's just effort and repetition. An app can help. But not when it makes you upload practice examples to a community space, where people can instantly tell you you've got it wrong. Of course I've got it wrong - my iphone doesn't have all the letters in your alphabet. Thanks for sending me lots of imessages saying "Someone has corrected your exercise". Thanks.

Also, thank you for waking me up this morning to ask me if I'd learned any new words today. No, I hadn't. It was 6am. orospu çocuğu.

Credit

I left it too late to get a credit card. I missed out on the golden age of free money. My first memory of a credit card is when one of Paul's wives on Neighbours got into trouble and he cut up her card for her, thereby solving all her money worries. I think they got a puppy the next week.

I spent the first half of my twenties definitely not having a credit card. Then along came Amazon and it seemed vital to have one in order to be able to get Digital Versatile Discs. The problem was that I had left it too late. Everyone else had got a credit card years ago, if not four of them. My lack of existing debt actually made me a problem for a bank - if I hadn't got one by the age of 24 there must be something wrong with me.

Eventually I persuaded a bank and it was joyous (how I remember the X-Files season 1 turning up like an alien artefact, a bargain at only $150). Nervous of my card, I paid off the balance every month in full, until, of course, that skiing holiday which, in many ways, I feel I'm still paying for (you've never lived till you've eaten 20 euros worth of tepid spagbol on top of a mountain).

After that my credit card became a companion. Now, don't worry, this isn't going to be a terrible story of debt and bankruptcy. I'm just saying that it was chic. The early 2000s was the era when people you'd never heard of would send you credit cards through the post. GET SOME MORE DEBT, the post would scream. The sign of a good holiday was telling friends "We spent so much I had to ring up the bank for more!". And we'd laugh. Because there was something fun, absurd about owing a couple of months' salary. Which, of course, you'd pay off. At some point in the never never. A sign of how successful you were was how much thrilling debt you had.

Even credit card fraud was glamorous. I still remember giggling with someone at the bank after my card had had a wild weekend without me in Monaco. Some day, I decided, I too would like to blow two grand on casinos and lingerie. We all laughed at all this money, money owed by someone to someone. But the good news was that it wasn't us. Or at least, not today.

It all seems so long ago. The bank no longer rings you up after your card's been fiddled with. Now they stop the card the moment they detect you trying to do anything unusual. In the last two months I've tried to book a couple of cheap flights and a theatre ticket deal. In 2005, this would have been the credit card equivalent of a tin of value beans and a panda cola. Hardly lingerie and roulette. But in 2013, alarm bells went off both times.

Banks are no longer Bertie Wooster - they're one of his more Presbyterian Aunts. They're more cautious. Or maybe their fraud systems are better. The nice lady at first direct (sometimes I wonder if, when nice people die, they go to work for first direct) did say something curious about it all; "I'm sorry this has happened. But I'm afraid it's not the bank. It's a problem with society."

She said it in the jolly tones of your favourite teacher shortly before a lesson on making shortbread and the deaths of the saints. But the phrase stuck with me. Even first direct has a training manual. A nice one. And I wondered how often over the last few years we've heard a variation on the phrase: "It's not the bank. It's a problem with society."

ur been used

The mysterious local graffiti about the enigmatic Tracy is back and there's no shifting it. It's everywhere like an over-keen viral marketing campaign for a doomed interactive drama. In the latest episode we've learned that the police are just using her, that she shouldn't trust the men she is seeing, that Steven still loves her, and that, if you are planning on going on a date with Tracy you should be careful what you tell her. 

I don't know Tracy, but I'd like to imagine she knows none of this, has moved to Hove, and when told about it, just laughs. But I doubt it.