lifestylesupportguru

Tag: coffee

The Cost Of Being Single

A very good evening from the Lifestyle Support Guru.

I decided to write this after reading an article in that esteemed, if just the teensiest bit left-wing, newspaper, The Grauniad (not to be confused with its sister paper, The Guardian), about the TRUE cost of being single.

‘Aha!’ I thought, ‘someone else who has wondered why M&S doesn’t do a ‘Dine in for One for £5 with free bottle of wine’, instead of assuming that everyone has someone with whom they wish to share their Gastropub Fish Pie or Gastropub Steak Lasagne with a side of Wild Rocket (that’s a SIDE dish?? That’s just a few pieces of grass which stick in your teeth and tickle your throat, making you cough and choke!)

He Doesn’t Like Vegetables!

In fact, come to think of it, there are probably people who are NOT single who would not wish to share their Gastropub Fish Pie or Gastropub Steak Lasagne, but they are called ‘greedy’ (and they’d probably go for the side dish of Chunky Chips rather than the Wild Rocket, and the other person in their life wouldn’t even get a look in at the Profiterole Stack).

But I digress. How disappointed I was when I read the article in full and found that it was just a whiney piece by some woman who was bemoaning the fact that she hadn’t found her rock, her soulmate, her ‘yang’ to her ‘yin’, her Andy Pandy to her Looby Loo, her Simon to her Garfunkel, her Thelma to her Louise (I’m being fully inclusive here), and how the government is bleeding her dry because of that. She came up with one or two interesting facts, I have to say – there are more unmarried women alive today than at any point in history, apparently, although I’m not sure if this will still be the same tomorrow or the day after…

However, on the plus side, I find I’ve saved money because she says, on average, women spend £1,280 a year on dates. The obvious answer is – just don’t go on dates, you stupid woman!
Hah! Bet some of you thought I was going to make some obvious, sexist remark about how women shouldn’t pay on dates anyway – believe me, I learned my lesson on that a long time ago in Redditch (where I was working at the time) when my date paid for the meal but said I could choose the wine since I spoke French (logic?) then said he only drank Liebfraumilch (not my favourite tipple, as Beloved Believers will know). Not only that, when he drove me back to my flat and I politely asked him if he wanted a coffee – hoping he’d say no – he produced a LITRE bottle of Liebfraumilch from the back seat and said we could drink that instead. He got coffee.

To compound matters, as he was leaving shortly after (I made him drink his coffee very quickly), he gave me a goodnight kiss and said I was a very sweet person. SWEET? SWEET?? SWEET??? The LSG may be many things – all-seeing, all-knowing, all over the place, but SWEET??? Reader, I did not marry him…

But I have strayed from the subject again. There are times when I feel aggrieved because I have to pay a supplement for being single (hotels, holidays, that sort of thing) but they have not yet started charging a premium on single women drinking wine, and that is something for which I am eternally grateful… unless someone from the government reads this and thinks, ‘What a jolly wheeze! Let’s start a new tax for all those people drinking on their own, even if they’re happy doing that. In fact, let’s tax them even more simply because they’re happy being on their own!’ They’d make a fortune from at least three people in my family!
Have a good weekend, dear LSG followers. I shall spend it avoiding anywhere and anyone that offers me a glass of Liebfraumilch…
… and paying for my own meal.

Decisions And Choices

Which way?

A very good evening from the Lifestyle Support Guru. Today, I want to talk to you about making DECISIONS and CHOICES, something that we all have to do at some point in life. DECISIONS can range from the mundane, such as ‘Do I want jam on my toast this morning?’ to the very IMPORTANT such as ‘Do I want this top in a yellow or a green stripe?’ (although I am trying to wean myself off stripes after realising that 6 out of 7 tops on my washing line the other day were striped).
I was recently faced with several (well, two, to be precise) situations which involved making DECISIONS, situations which I thought I would share with you, my dear followers, so that you know what you might encounter should you find yourself in similar positions.
You decide to go into town to purchase some new underwear and you visit a well-known supplier of such items – let’s use the initials M&S, just as an example, although other purveyors of such items are available, but these tend to be more ‘unreliable’ (for want of a better word) or well beyond one’s budget. And this is where the first DECISIONS have to be made. You find yourself presented with a bewildering array of CHOICES: ‘Balcony’, ‘Plunge’, ‘More Cleavage’, ‘Uplift’, ‘Padded’, ‘Wired’, ‘NonWired’, ‘Minimiser’, ‘Sport'(unlikely for the LSG) or a mixture – at this point you feel like shouting ‘I just want a BRA!’ Almost any combination is possible! There was one which was described as an ‘Uplift Runway’, which sounded more like something where you might expect to find a Boeing 747 rather than female appendages. (Boys, don’t think I am

aeroplane Boeing 747

excluding you – as you know, the LSG is fully inclusive, so feel free to learn from this experience, either personally or for a ‘significant other’.) Of course, having found a perfectly acceptable style which is not going to squeeze you into a shape resembling a cross between Katie Price and Kim Kardashian, you are now faced with a CHOICE of colours, but by this time you just want a coffee and you grab the nearest white one (because the flesh-coloured ones are slightly creepy) and pay.
And this is where the next DECISION comes in:
Where to have a coffee? The LSG is fond of independent cafes rather than the chains which don’t pay their taxes and are sometimes too pretentious for their own good, but your need for some refreshment overcomes your principles and you head for a nearby café which shall remain anonymous but whose name begins with C and ends in A. After reading the ‘menu’, you ask if they have ‘an ordinary decaff coffee’, which leads to the first set of raised eyebrows – ‘ORDINARY?’ is almost written in the pained expression on the barista’s face.
‘Medium or large?’
‘Do you do small?’
Again, the raised eyebrows, and the barista (he’s a bloody waiter when all’s said and done) pointedly searches for a small cup.
‘Full or skimmed milk?’

coffee

Wearily) ‘Do you have semi-skimmed?’
More raised eyebrows, then, seeing the growing frustration on your face: ‘I can do half and half.’
You finally get your coffee – which costs almost as much as your newly-purchased bra – and seat yourself in the furthest reaches of this establishment, well away from the possibility of contact with any other human being. The LSG may wish to help others live a fuller and more enjoyable life, but there are times when even she feels the weight of this responsibility falling heavily on her shoulders and needs to withdraw from the hubbub of daily life. (I would have gone to the pub, but they weren’t open at that hour.)

Enjoy the long Bank Holiday weekend, dear devotees! May the rain fall elsewhere other than on you!

Have you “BEEN”?

A very good evening, one and all, from the Lifestyle Support Guru. This evening I have a SORRY TALE to tell and a HARD LESSON learned – this is after I found that Good Golly Miss Molly, my black cat, has learned to open cat food pouches (but that’s another story)!

Letter E

So, what have I learned? – that WANTING A WEE can be EXPENSIVE.
The story starts at an Italian evening class (although it could just as easily be Serbo-Croat, Painting By Numbers or Knit Your Own Knickers if you prefer) where you find that the Italian for ‘electricity’ is surprisingly difficult to say. (This point is actually irrelevant, but it surprised me, nevertheless.) During the lesson, make sure that you drink a cup of coffee and half a bottle of orange Oasis but decide that you’ll make it home before WANTING A WEE. However, you forget that you need to call in at Sainsbury’s for petrol on your way home

Need toilet

because you won’t have time tomorrow morning before setting off for the wilds of Chesterfield. ‘Aha!’ you think. ‘They’ve got a toilet inside the store, so I’ll call in there before getting petrol.’

Having done the necessary (too much information?) and washed your hands, as instructed on the back of the toilet door – ‘Wash Your Hands’, without even a ‘Please’ – you decide you might as well have a look at the birthday cards while you’re here because it’s a sibling’s birthday in a few days’ time and you spend a pleasant ten minutes giggling at the ‘Humorous’ section before choosing a card which you think is hilarious, although your sister may not when she opens it next week.

That done, you decide it would be a shame to leave the store without having a quick look in the Clothing section, although you have no intention of buying anything, of course! Unfortunately, this rather delicious orange top leaps out at you and you decide to follow the golden rule – ‘if it isn’t yellow, or blue and white stripes, then go for orange’. Besides, you just KNOW that it’s a different shade of orange from the ones you’ve bought in previous years.

ATM

Having made your purchases, you leave the store and realise that you have very little money on you and you may well be in need of refreshment a little later on (because your mouth is dry from practising ‘electricity’ to yourself in Italian), so you go to the wine voucher machine (aka the Cashpoint) before finally going to get some petrol, which costs you an arm and a leg because the tank was rather empty.

So there you have it, dear LSG worshippers – always ask yourself ‘Have you been?’ before setting out on any journey of more than twenty minutes’ duration after you have consumed any beverages because WANTING A WEE can cost you unexpected SQUILLIONS!

Enjoy the rest of your evening – and before you go to bed, ask yourself, ‘Have you been?’