Ceramic huskies and septogenarians...

Well hello there! Buon Giornio!

Now, I'm going to start by saying that I can't write too much on here as am meant to be packing to go to Estonia tonight with my mates for 5 days but I know that once I get started there's a high chance that I may ramble on for hours so we'll just sit back and see how it goes eh??


Anyway, I'm back from Italy and have a tan that makes me look like I've been dipped in creosote along with Pamela Anderson colour hair - damn those Estonian genes, they make you look like a complete playboy bimbo! I spent the whole time trying to keep out of the sun but I still went super-dark and my hair's gone completely white. Trainer boy loves it as he thinks I look like some sort of dollybird but I reckon I just look like a complete chav who's overdone it with the sunbeds and the bleach.

I've also strangely lost more weight so have been being told off by my mum who thinks I've developed an eating disorder (how she could say this when I was swilling down a burger with a glass of rose in front of her I don't know!) My mate who I went on holiday with though has coined a new term for me; she reckons I'm a "drunkorexic". This apparently means that I don't eat enough real food but get most of my calories from alcohol! I've decided that if you go "around the bar in 80 ways" it's almost possible to get all your food groups from behind the bar anyway.... Iron from guinness, protein from advocaat and baileys, fruit from cocktails, veg from the celery in a bloody mary and olives in martinis, carbs from the wafers in ice cream floater cocktails and sugar from rum and coke - genius!

No, don't start shouting at me ladies - I can assure you I am eating properly. I've just still not got much of an appetite as everything (despite things being calmer) is all still in a bit of a tangle and my appetite always goes when I'm under pressure. Trainer boy is regularly assessing me too and he reckons I'm fine so you can lay down the emergency cakes and crisps people, I don't need force feeding just yet!

Speaking of trainer boy, we almost parted company on Saturday. He picked me up and we went to visit his new neice in the afternoon who had been born whilst I was in Italy. I took a pressie round for his sister and another for the baby and then TB took me for a meal. I got ridiculously drunk, a combination of nerves at meeting his sister and accidentally pouring a gallon of zinfandel down my gullet.
I ended up crashed out on TB's sofa and woke up at about half five in the morning. TB was in bed and I tried to sneak out as I was mortified that once again I had passed out in front of him. Unfortunately, he heard my rather undiginified exit (who on earth leaves dumbells at the top of the stairs?) and he dashed out of his room to see what all the racket was. I noticed then that his chest hair had still not grown back after his "charity stunt" a month or so ago. It was then that TB revealed that he had lied to me.
Now, a normal person's reaction to what he told me would have been to laugh out loud but mine was slightly odd. He told me that it had not been a charity stunt and that he'd had it lasered off. I wouldn't have minded but he came round to my house the evening after his "charity do" and I had to spend the evening hunting for calamine lotion as it was bright red and burning him. He also asked me the day before he had it done if I liked hairy chests or not.
This meant that he had deliberately lied to me, concocted a stupid story, carried on the lie for weeks and only admitted it to me when he almost attacked me bare-chested as he thought I was a burglar crashing about in his stairwell in the middle of the night.
Now, I'm not sure if this was the behaviour of a sane person but I shouted at him that he was a "lying b*stard who was no better than supertwat". I ranted for about 5 minutes about how I thought he was different and not a liar and how was I meant to believe a word he said now.
I ended up sobbing so much that his flatmate came out of his room to see what all the noise was about and found trainer boy trying to grab me to stop me leaving so that he could explain and me stumbling around blindly over a pile of dumbells whilst getting my handbag handle stuck on the door and shouting such classics as "who lies about laser treatment you idiot; you've now got a chest like a badly mown lawn!"
TB's flatmate was by now utterly bewildered as to why TB and I were seemingly wrestling in a pile of gym equipment and shouting about hair removal. So, he just quietly slipped off back into his room shaking his head.
I managed to extricate myself from trainer boy and the flat and drove off crying down the road as TB sprinted after me then sat and sank down on the pavement with his head in his hands.
I phoned my mate (who was not best pleased as it was only 6am) and wept that TB had turned out to be a complete liar. As I retold the whole story, i could hear a strange muffled noise on the end of the phone. When I got to the part about the badly mown lawn, this noise became hysterical laughter from my mate. She explained that she thought I had completely flipped and that TB was not in the same league as supertwat. She reassured me that he was a genuine guy who had probably only not told me cause he was embarrassed. this was exactly what TB had said so I started to feel a bit bad. TB then called my mate on her mobile so I carried on driving home.
My mate phoned me to say that he had been crying on the phone to her and was devastated that I had compared him to supertwat and that I had stormed off. She said she and TB both knew that I had had enough lies to last me a lifetime in the last few months but that this one really wasn't worth getting my knickers in a twist for.
TB then turned up at my house later than day with a huge bunch of roses to which said "Sorry for being a complete lying w*nker. I'm an idiot." The fact I had this lovely romantic bunch of flowers with such a blunt message made me laugh out loud and he took me out for a meal again to say sorry. Turns out he'd been on the phone to my best mate for most of the day telling her how sorry he was and asking how he could make it up to me. - bless him!

Anyway, me and TB are mates again and he's been an absolute sweeheart whilst I've been ranting about Supertwat's lack of communication not to mention cash!

I'm also feeling so much calmer after my holiday with my mate. Our hotel was lovely but was a very grand but faded mansion style hotel in the mountains of sorrento. I felt a little like I was in a Miss Marple episode as it was all card tables and billiard rooms. On our arrival, whilst I was trying to dab half a bottle of red wine off my white jeans (never travel in light coloured denim) and trying to hobble to reception (My feet had swollen up so much in my stilleto sandals that they looked like two hams wrapped in string) I was horrified to find out we'd been allocated the honeymoon suite. We were shown into this grand room full of flowers and complimentary wine with its own private balcony and huge double bed. When we had stopped laughing and managed to explain to the confused staff on reception that we were not a same sex honeymooning couple, I suddenly started to cry. My mate was lovely. It suddenly hit me that I was never going to go on a honeymoon and that I was on my honeymoon with my friend. She gave me a huge hug and an even bigger glass of wine and I managed to pull myself together. The hotel staff were very apologetic and offered to change our room but we decided to keep it as it was a gorgeous room and we've been on holidays before where we've had to share a bed so we weren't that bothered.

I however, was rather less composed at the welcome meeting. Our rather unglamorous rep who was covered in plasters after falling down some rocks covered in sea urchins, gave us the low down about all the trips we could do. Whilst everyone signed up for days out to pompeii, capri and ischia, I was suddenly overwhelmingly sad again. I started crying behind my sunglasses and took myself off for a small walk across the roof terrace to try and calm myself down. I ended up texting my mum that I felt like an ungrateful cow because I was in a gorgeous part of the world, in lovely weather with my best mate but I couldn't stop crying. My mum texted me back and said that she, dad and my brother were so proud of me and that my tears were just the shock and exhaustion coming out now that I'd slowed down a bit.

I returned to the group to find my mate had booked us on loads of trips and we started with a walking tour around the local town. We had been sold it as a one hour "find your bearings" walk but when we ended up at a demonstration of how to produce an inlaid wood casino table stood next to a lifesize ceramic husky, we decided to sneak off and leave the sea urchin rep to gasp at the astounding chisel action of the master inlaid wood craftsman.

We ended up back at the hotel and changed into our bikinis. We went down to the pool where I suddenly felt like I was on a filmset. Was it the Italian Job? The Blue Lagoon? Castaway?
No.
I felt like I was in the film "Cocoon".
Every person around the pool was at least over the age of 60. It was a festival of steradent, tena lady, varicose veins and swimming hats with chin straps. (And that was just the men)
I was aghast. Where were all the gorgeous, bronzed adonis Italian men? All I could see was a sea of grey hair and people playing "whist".

My mate thought it was hilarious and threw herself wholeheartedly into getting to know everyone. She had soon befriended a couple in their seventies from Swansea who were absolutely lovely. They adopted us for the week and kept getting us drinks and morning coffee. We even went with them to a local wine cellar where they tried to fix us up with the barman who was so hairy he looked half man, half sheep! It was during this rather odd evening of drinking wine in a cellar with two septogenarians and a woolly italian that I realised I was actually having a lovely time and that I wasn't thinking too much about supertwat. It was a major step forward for me that I wasn't so uptight and angry and I was simply relaxing. The couple from Swansea were aghast when I confided in them about the story and really took me under their wing all week and the chap kept hugging me every morning and telling me how pretty I was. It was lovely to get some outside perspectives and made me realise just how shocking what supertwat had done was.

I also had some highly glamorous moments during the week like managing to accidentally scoop up a soggy dog poo inside my flip flop and was screeching with disgust in the street as my mate hung onto a lampost she was laughing so much. I also decided to wear a dress to Capri rather than shorts and a vest top but forgot that i was going on a chair lift. It meant that instead of looking glam and sophisticated, I had to do a rather complicated dismount off the lift as the breeze kept catching my dress and I didn't want to flash myt burnt bum cheek to the world. I exited the chair lift with a gait not dissimilar to quasimodo as I was hunched over dragging my dress down whilst trying to leap off a single man chair onto a landing platform. I landed oddly on my heels and fell onto my knees in front of the chair lift attendant who, when pulling me up, managed to dislodge my hand from my hem so that the whole queue got a flash of my toasted bum - delightful.

Anyway, got loads more to write but am getting RSI at the moment.
Might update later but really do need to crack on and get my washing done before tonight - I can't just fly out with my suitcase full of last week's clothes!

If I don't manage to update today then I'll be back on her on Wednesday 6th. So, love to you all in the meantime.
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