Saved!

Two things...

...the piano. Yes, a waste company said; they would come and collect the remains of our dead piano. It would cost me £50 for the privilege but hey, it would get rid of it from the driveway and negate the risk of it falling onto my car and smashing the lovely metallic blue paintwork to smithereens in a high wind. The company would collect late afternoon, possibly tomorrow. So, mid-afternoon there was a knock on the door. A small and smiley and muscley man was on the door step.

'I see you've got the insides of a piano on your drive,' he said.

'Are you from the waste company?' I said.

'No,' he said. 'But if you want to get rid of it, I'll take it now. No charge.' And he showed me his official card that proved him to be a properly licensed scrap merchant and not some shyster who would dump what he didn't want in some Kentish beauty spot somewhere. Not that there are many Kentish beauty spots left, not since John Prescott started concreting over the county, but I digress....

So what are the chances of something like that happening? Mr Small - Smiley- Muscley loaded the piano innards onto his lorry using the dinkiest crane I've ever seen, I refilled his squash bottle for him, and he went off happy with his spoils leaving me happy at saving £50.

...the bees in the roof. Which turned out NOT to be bees after all, but WASPS!! What a relief! Not for the wasps, obviously, who are now in the process of becoming ex-wasps, but ooooh the angst I've been suffering thinking I was going to be party to a bee massacre. You spend the whole season nurturing your numbers up to an excess of a quarter of a million, then you commit an act of deliberate murder.

The Wasp Man came out and stared at the roof for a while. 'Are you sure they are bees?' said he.

'No, 'said I, 'it's an assumption based on my being a bee-keeper and the fact we've got a full-to-bursting top-bar hive at the bottom of the garden.'

Wasp Man hummed, got out his binoculars and stared at the roof a bit more. 'Definitely wasps,' he declared. 'That's a relief, isn't it?' he added. Obviously he had picked up on my bee-ocide guilt.

So he got out his cannister of insectijollop and had a good old squirt around and declared his job done.

I apologised for not being able to tell a wasp from a bee at 45 feet.

'Don't worry,' he said. 'It amazes me the number of people who think that bumble bees are wasps. I knew what a bumblebee looked like when I was two.'

I thought that was very impressive. My only memory from when I was two is walking around the back garden with a yellow bucket on my head and banging into the fence.

Two good things to end this stressy week, then. I'm keeping everything crossed that more stresses on my list will meet with equal efficiency next week.

Crisis

... with bees in the roof space
... with boilers on the blink
... with daughters and their boyfriends
... with sons and their weddings
... with pianos and their innards
... with mortgages and their rates
... with incompetent lawyers who make assumptions
... with having to go places you don't want to be seen dead in

... with dodgy bathroom windows
... with awful books to teach (esp. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - eurghhh!)
... with friends who aren't very well and worry you
... with allotments overgrown with weeds
... with days too hot for baking
... with a mind fed up with it all
... with the sudden onset of bingo wings
... with a school that STILL hasn't sent a letter of appointment even though its nearly eight weeks since the interview

... with gangs of spitting, swearing youths roaming the road with their idiot haircuts and penchant for lager for elevenses
... with the people next-door-but-one who have been BANGING and DRILLING non-stop for 4 days now
... with trying to think of what to cook for dinner tonight after more than 25 years of thinking what to cook for dinner tonight
... with too many expectations to be Wonder Woman... and all that jazz... you know what I think? I think I might just pack a bag and RUN AWAY FROM IT ALL NOW...

Stress Management

This week, Andy has been on a stress management course. He texted me to say that a) the hotel he was staying in was very posh and b) he'd fallen asleep on the floor during one of the relaxation exercises and snored.

He also learned that a stressed person can be one of three types. They are:

1) stress carriers, who keep their stress to themselves and thus run the risk of self-imploding with stress or at the least getting a nasty headache/ tummy ache and walking around looking pained and sighing a lot and responding 'No, I'm fine, honest (sob)' when people ask them if they are okay
2) stress transmitters, who spread their stress to everyone around them, thus diluting their own angst but making everyone else feel crap in the process, a bit like nasty flu bugs or malaria loaded mosquitoes and
3) stress dumpers, who blame everyone else for their stress i.e 'It's all YOUR fault I'm so stressed. If you didn't exist I wouldn't be so STRESSED, how selfish are you, you big stress anatagonist?'

We all get stressed in different ways and to different levels. And here is the Much Malarkey Manor Guide to Stress Management.

1) In order to be truly stressed you must be at least 21 years old; under 21's don't know the meaning of the word 'stress' and use it far too frequently, in my view, to refer to something that is really just a mere irritation e.g like when their hair doesn't end up 'just so' in the morning hair straightening ritual or their bezzy mate uses the last of the mayonnaise and replaces the empty jar in the fridge in their shared digs

2) A lot of stress can be dealt with by the simple act of 'waiting to see what happens.' Accompany the act with copious tea, cake and re-runs of 'Top Gear' on Dave, and most developing stress situations will dissipate (I love that word, don't you?) in an hour or two. And seeing Jeremy Clarkson getting angry at the latest remodel of a family-sized Ford will always put your own stress issues into perspective

3) Be aware of your own stress ignition points (or SIPs, as I shall now call them) and do your best to avoid them or at least have some SIP diversion tactics in place. For example, if someone banging their cutlery against their teeth when they are eating makes you want to grab their fork and ram it down their throat, introduce some meal-time humming. Or play the radio/TV really loudly. Or if clutter gets on the one nerve you have left at the end of the day, grab a bin bag, pile the clutter into the bin bag, run into the garden, set fire to the bin bag and spend twenty minutes dancing around the flames cackling to the moon. (It'll will likely be a full moon if you find yourself actually taking this course of action.) DO NOT think twice about this method, DO NOT give the clutterbugs the option to remove the clutter. I mean, if they've been living with you for any length of time, they should know all about you and your relationship with clutter, so have only got themselves to blame if one of their favourite pairs of slouch socks, or a much beloved novel goes up in smoke.

4) Amass a collection of objects and activities that will alleviate any stress-related physical effects. My own anti-stress kit consists of a) a kitten b) my fingernails c) food that is crunchy and doesn't involve any sort of preparation before eating d) the thought of being able to run into the road and scream at the top of my voice at 3 am knowing there is nothing anyone can do to stop me e) a box set of 'The Darling Buds of May' f) any of the following DVDs - Love Actually, Down with Love, The Producers, Madagascar 2 g) playing endless games of solitaire on the laptop h) chickens watching i) making mindless lists. (At least, that is anti-stress kit Number 1. My other anti-stress kits are way too dark and vengeful to mention here.)

5) If you find you are suddenly in the throes of a bout of stress, there are many products on the market you can use to calm down the excessively beating heart, the sweaty palms, the dizziness, the sheer force of rage that is building inside you like the Incredible Hulk waiting to burst forth and go 'GGGGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!' at everything in sight. Things like meditation CDs, visualisation CDs, motivational books, squeezy balls, lavender oil. My understanding is that you gather these CDs, books, balls and oils and throw them with all your stressy, angry might at the source of your stress (inanimate or living) and you should feel very much better. If you have none of these products to hand, then a cushion, dinner plate or house brick will do just as well.

6) Stress can be good. Stress generates adrenaline, the 'fight or flight' hormone. It is stress that will save you from missing a deadline at work and getting into trouble with your boss, or being eaten by a lion should you find yourself being chased by one on safari. Stress once saved me from being mugged by a toddler in the sweetie aisle in Sainsbugs. (And not, as some people would have it, the fact that I was three feet taller, 20 decibels louder, 9 stone heavier and the one in buying power position.)

7) Remember that stress is only a six letter word. Like 'friend' and 'joyous.' And 'panics', 'murder' and 'horror'.

8) Stress is relative. Assess your stressful situation. Does it involve your partner, child, parent or in-law? See, I told you so.

9) You can be signed off work for stress-related illness. Then you can sit at home and watch real stress at work on the Jeremy Kyle Show.

10) I was feeling stressed when I started writing this guide. But now I don't. The act of writing has de-stressed me. So find you own stress-diversion therapy and employ it when the blood pressure starts rising. It works. Honest.

(PS - Andy has just tried to find a relaxation download from the Interwebbly for him to listen to when he's stressed. Apparently, they were all by nasal Americans, or insincere men, or sounded too 'Californian' ,whatever that means. It caused him much stress.)