Elvis isn’t dead (I heard it on the radio).

Well, it’s been a while.

I was getting ready for a wedding a few months ago and asked Dave to help me zip my dress up. He is a bit of a man when it comes to things like zipping up dresses and fastening bracelets, and the zip broke a bit. Over the course of the day a gape grew bigger and bigger until I looked like I had purchased a dress with cut-out sides, which is actually in fashion if you ignore the spilling flesh. Anyway, I decided at that moment that I was due another blog entry.

A lot has happened since my last blog piece. I have successfully qualified as an Occupational Therapist and left my job of 8 years to work with real-life patients! As this Christmas was going to be my last at the good old HMRC, I volunteered to be Father Christmas at our annual ‘secret santa’ event. The office cheered as I walked along the floor carrying my sack, complete with beard and elf slippers (which, thinking about it, Father Christmas probably doesn’t wear). I made the mistake of speaking in a really strange manly Welsh voice as I did the ‘ho ho ho’ thing and asked if everyone had been good that year, and, after calling out 30 names in the same weird tone/accent I was pretty embarrassed.

                                              

My work colleagues then thought that would be a good moment to do a leaving presentation for me, which I received sheepishly, beard still in situ. One by one, they turned around masks to reveal my face, which was really creepy. They had blown up a passport photo I had dropped on the floor on my way to an interview which happened to be the first photo I have ever had taken in which my lazy eye is evident.

                           

Pets.

Dave asked for a dog for his birthday so I decided to get him fish so we could practice looking after something as well as ourselves. On my lunch break I purchased two fish from the slightly scummy market pet shop, and returned to work with them on my desk. The boys received quite a lot of attention that afternoon. People said things like “I trust you have had the water prepared for a few days” and “how are you going to get them home without Dave seeing them?” and “you do know you can’t leave them in the bag until his birthday next week?”, and it transpired that I had not thought the fish thing through. So when Dave picked me up from work that day I handed him the bag and told him it was his early birthday present. We got to name one each; Dave’s choice being Elvis, and mine Tyler.

Two days later it was Christmas morning and I was on the phone to my mum having a very serious conversation about how safe it was to cook the semi-frozen chicken that had spent a few hours on the radiator after I had failed to remember to defrost it. I glanced up to see Elvis’ lifeless body floating at the top of the fish tank. I told my mum I had to go; that the fish had died, and hung up immediately. I went into the front room where Dave was, and in a surreal moment I fell to the floor and began crying hysterically. Dave was very supportive (he later told me that he had thought my mum had died) and, through sobs, I notified him that the fish had died. Although his facial expressions screamed “Is that IT??!!!!” he hugged me nevertheless, and reassured me that things would be ok as I cried out things like “what if he suffered”, and, “we didn’t look after them properly and now we’ve killed him”. I had burned fish fingers the previous night and couldn’t shift the awful thought that burnt fish may have been the last thing poor Elvis had smelled. Five minutes later I had calmed down a little and Dave reminded me that I had a chicken dilemma to resolve. While I wiped away my tears Dave went to ‘deal’ with the fish.

He came back in a few seconds later and informed me that Elvis was in fact swimming around the tank. I told Dave it was a Christmas miracle and got on with preparing dinner.

When in Rome.

David and I were very posh and celebrated our first wedding anniversary in Rome. It was different in my head to real life.

My head: we would spend a day exploring the colloseum and its surroundings. We would drink wine and eat gourmet Italian food in the colloseum grounds and pose for pictures in the sunshine before having a tour guide of the grand building, learning of its history. We would then stroll (hand-in-hand) back to our hotel.

Real life: we had a really average pizza in a pub and enjoyed a reduced beer courtesy of happy hour. We had an argument with a man dressed in plastic roman gear who was trying to take our picture for a tip. We couldn’t afford a tour guide so we shared an audio guide and fell out because I kept walking too far and pulling the earpiece out of Dave’s ear. I got really bored listening to details of the structure of the building and had a little sulk. We got lost trying to find our way out of the colloseum and got really tired going up and down loads of steps. Towards the end of our visit it began chucking it down and Dave had not brought his coat. After angrily telling about 20 Italian men that he did not want to purchase their cheap umbrellas or ponchos, I suggested to Dave that it might be in fact beneficial to buy a brolly and he had to go and haggle for one for 2 euros as he had just spent his other 4 euros on a can of coke. We rushed back to the hotel (with a few zebra crossing near-death misses) and to this day my boots are still damp.

My head: we would spend a day travelling to Pompeii and revel in its historic mystery. We would enjoy a scenic train journey along the coast and through the countryside of Italy and experience a taste of true Italian culture in travelling from Naples to Pompeii on the Circumvesuviana railway. Again, the day would involve gourmet Italian food, wine and sunshine.

Real life: we left the hotel and spent half an hour queuing for travel information before realising everyone else had tickets with numbers on. We then spent fifteen minutes figuring out which button to press for our tickets as the instructions were in Italian. For the following forty-five minutes we awaited our ticket number to appear on the screen. During this time we protected our belongings from various pick-pocketers who hovered around our bags with their friends. We were feeling very tense by the time we saw an operator and were therefore relieved to purchase our train tickets to Pompeii, even if they were more costly than we had anticipated. After buying the tickets the man asked if we would like to buy return tickets. I explained that I had thought the price quoted to us was for return tickets, he confirmed not and suggested we stayed over in Pompeii instead of returning to Rome (?!). Eventually the man allowed me to cancel the tickets and gave us a refund. We left Rome termini (walking yards apart) and returned to our hotel in silence.

The following day, we got to the station early and used the machine (improving) to purchase return tickets to Pompeii. The affordable tickets got us seats on the ‘regional’ train which was a bit like Preston bus but less comfy. Some views would have been nice had we been able to see through the dirty windows. We arrived in Naples three hours later and were approached by a uniformed man who informed us he worked at the station and instructed us to follow him to the train line we needed for Pompeii. We followed obediently and purchased more tickets. On reaching the platform the man held out his hand for a tip. We apologised and explained we had no spare money. He spat on the floor and demanded some money. Dave was firm, exclaiming “you said you worked here!” while I politely reminded him that we had not asked for any help and explained that the tipping system was rather different where we lived, as I was a little bit worried that we were stood next to a train track with an angry man. 

The circumvesuviana train was far too over-crowded and I spent the journey to Pompeii using all my might to grip my bag and stay standing as the people stood around me looked like they would quite like an excuse to kill me. Despite only having an hour and fifty minutes to explore the ruins of Pompeii before returning to catch the train back, Dave still considers it his favourite part of the holiday, so I guess it was worth it. It was raining so hard that there weren’t so many tourists visiting that day. We had spent most of our money on the train but we did have enough for Dave to have a Mars bar and me a Kit Kat. When we left the ruins Dave smiled cheekily and said he had a confession to make, pulling a piece of Pompeii rubble out of his pocket. I smiled and replied “me too!” and revealed a massive pine cone. Dave informed me that you shouldn’t take pine cones on a plane…”and you know that pine cone isn’t two thousand years old, right?”Obviously. I threw my souvenir in the bin. We arrived back in Rome late and got wet again after Dave’s new brolly broke.

This blog entry is dedicated to Elvis and Tyler, who both passed away last week.