I went to one of the armpits of England and nearly had a nervous breakdown

After being propositioned in Kuala Lumpur by an extremely good looking woman outside his hotel… “I give best blow job in Kuala Lumpur!”… Mr Ex eventually got to Australia (when he recounted this to me, I wanted to know if she came with written references and/or testimonials, otherwise she might have been, heaven forbid, lying. I also wanted to know if he was sure the extremely good looking woman was a woman. He looked a bit disconcerted at this question… heh).

But goodness me, time dragged its heels flew when I was bored witless having fun working in Mr Ex’s office while he was living it up on his first visit to the other side of the world.

Actually, from what I can make out, there wasn’t too much living it up done, because he was too busy.

Yes, he went, he saw, he… gardened. For almost the entire time he was there.

If you ask me, it’s a long way to go just to do a bit of digging and planting. But each to their own, I suppose. *snort*

Unfortunately I have to report that I didn’t train the pigeons outside his office window to do anything offensive - to be honest, I forgot they were there. I daresay I shall be kicking myself for this oversight at some point.

But hopefully not for too much longer.

I had my job interview on Thursday - hurrah! Actually, it wasn’t just an interview, it was an assessment day. I had to be at the place of assessment/interview for 8:30am and as it involved a journey of approximately seventy miles to get there (‘there’ being what I consider to be a town classed as one of the armpits of England), I took the decision to book myself a hotel room and travel the night before, thus taking away any stress.

I had a straightforward journey there on Wednesday evening; the M25 was hassle free – apart from the obligatory roadworks. Plus there were more roadworks on the other motorway I had to use. Meh. I checked into the hotel (six miles away from where I needed to be the next day), set out everything I needed for the morning, set my alarm for 6am and after having a cheeky beer in the hotel bar, went to bed.

During the hours of darkness, I woke up, looked at the time, groaned when I saw it was 4:45am, turned over, pulled the duvet over my head and went back to sleep.

A while later, I gradually surfaced into consciousness and just lay there waiting for the alarm to go off.

I laid there.

I laid there longer.

I laid there longer still.

Eventually it dawned on me that the traffic outside was increasing and seemed to be a bit heavy considering it was before 6am.

So I looked at the time.

6:20am

Shit! The alarm hadn’t gone off: even though it was showing the alarm symbol, and it was showing ‘Snooze’ it wasn’t making a sound. Feckin’ iPhone!

I jumped out of bed, ran into the shower and ran out again (body, water… water, body. No time for the luxury of standing under the water for as long as I usually do), then proceeded to get ready (taming my hair takes priority – no way was I going to attend an assessment day, for a job I really want, with even a hint of scary hair – sorry Mum, I know you prefer my hair in its untamed state, but a)I don’t and b)the people I was being assessed/interviewed by would definitely have taken a dim view).

My original plan was to be downstairs for breakfast by 7am and away from the hotel by 7:30am. In my hastily revised plan (and by ‘revised plan’ I really mean ‘panic’) I ended up downstairs at 7:15am. I had to wait what felt like forever for the girl to come out of the kitchen to take my room number before I could get my food (but was actually only about 45 seconds).

Just imagine, there was I, dressed to impress, hair and make-up done to perfection, sitting in the restaurant amongst other people, with my plate of food consisting of two rashers of bacon, one sausage, scrambled egg, tomatoes, mushrooms and a glass of orange juice, which I proceeded to bolt down in about five minutes flat.

Classy.

I then went back to my room to get my stuff so that I could check out but found my key card wouldn’t work on my door.

SAKE!

I stood there for a couple of minutes, inserting the card slooooowly, removing it just as slooooowly.

Nothing.

I tried putting it in and out really quickly several times.

Nada.

I tried threatening the door and the key card.

No response.

Sighing and starting to panic ever so slightly, I made my way back downstairs to Reception to seek help.

Yes, Reception where there was nobody in attendance.

Fuck.

I pressed the button to call someone and waited a couple of minutes.

No response.

Fuckers.

After huffing and puffing and pacing backwards and forwards in sight of the security camera to no avail, I decided to go back to the nemesis that was my hotel room door and give it another go.

Swearing under my breath, I stood at that door and eventually I managed to get it open.

I grabbed all my stuff and with an ‘Up Yours’ to the door, I closed it behind me, praying I hadn’t forgotten anything. I hadn’t, thank goodness. I walked out of the hotel to my car, unlocked it, opened a rear passenger door to put my small case in the back and heard a noise.

The shoulder strap on my handbag had decided to break.

If you happened to be driving past a hotel on a main road in a town regarded as one of the armpits of England on Thursday morning and saw a smartly dressed woman standing next to a car, banging her forehead on said car and shouting, “FOR FUCKSAKE!” that would have been me.

Anyway, I got to the place of interview on time, totally chilled out, and left that afternoon at about 3:30pm.

I don’t know the outcome yet, but hopefully it won’t be long before I do. In the meantime, it’s back to the pigeons.

Gah.