Long entry is long in Diary

I don’t know how people find the time to write in here every day. I’ve had to take a day off work so I can do it. Not really, I had an audition for UK gameshow The Chase. It was in the morning but I decided to take the whole day so I didn’t have to be rushing back to work and I could spend some time relaxing for a change, something which I don’t have much time for lately. And I still didn’t manage to do it today, I’ve spent the whole afternoon cleaning the kitchen, running on the treadmill, walking Roxy and doing boring house admin.

Oh, you want to hear about my audition? I applied in September 2014 and had forgotten all about it until I got a phone call a couple of weeks ago. Apparently 45,000 people applied and they invited about 3,000 to audition. I’m glad I didn’t have to trawl through all those applications! I was one of eight people in my audition. It started with a quickfire quiz; 20 seconds with less than five seconds between each one.

Next we had to take turns playing a game where we got a topic such as “types of pizza” and we had to shout “Pepperoni, Hawaiian” etc. for everyone else to guess what the topic was. We had 30 seconds to get as many as possible. One of my topics was “England managers.” I was assuming it was about football but I have absolutely no idea. The others were ok though; types of footwear, planets in the solar system, that sort of thing.

The next part was talking about ourselves into a camera for two minutes; occupation, hobbies, what we would spend our winnings on.

Then we got into two groups of four and had to answer as many questions as possible in two minutes, as a team; much in the same way as a part of the show. We got 18 which is a fairly respectable score, looking at how many they tend to get on the show; I watched it today and the team scored 18 and won £16,000 with that so it is possible!

Lastly there was another quick fire round of 20 questions and then we had to go into another room where we waited to see if we had been shortlisted. And we have! All eight of us! So I’ve made it down from 45,000 to the final 1,000. And as they’re filming 190 episodes, with four contestants on each episode, meaning they’re going to need 760 people so I think I’ve got a pretty good chance of getting on.

That wasn’t the end of it, though; we then had to come home and fill in yet another application form which the producers will use to choose who to invite onto the show. A very long drawn out process but it’ll be exciting if I get chosen, especially if I win some money; me and Jay can have a brilliant honeymoon. We want to go to New York and Canada so I’m already spending it in my head, haha.

I won’t get too excited, though; I got this far in the audition process for Tipping Point and didn’t get chosen. I was also a contestant on The Weakest Link in 2002 but didn’t win any money then either. Third time lucky I think!

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We had our one-to-one sessions at work and I got a glowing report as usual; our deputy manager even used the word “perfect”, so there you go ;o) Last month I answered 2,550 phone calls and emails, which was the top out of all seven of us. The next closest person was over 1,000 FEWER than me. I answered almost double what the next person did, and the other five people were even lower than that. What on Earth have they all been doing with their time??

So she’s got sick of it all; I’ve been way out in front for every single month since we started nine months ago. She’s put up a leader board with everyone’s names in order of who’s answered the most calls. Nick saw it go up and complained “Why am I second from the bottom?” Hmmm, maybe if you answer some more calls and stop chatting with every customer for 15 minutes, and spending all your time shopping online for different flavoured vape juices, then you would be a bit higher up maybe…?

Apparently whenever I have a day off, the manager of the whole office starts to worry and says that they’re going to struggle to answer all the calls. Well I was off today so they’re just going to have to pull their socks up and get on with it, I can’t be carrying them all.

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Diet and exercise. My weight has been fluctuating day to day, week to week, but I think overall I have lost weight. At the beginning of the year, it was about 10st 8lb - 10st 10lb. Now it’s sticking around 10st 6lb - 10st 7lb. So I’ve lost around 3 - 4lb. Which isn’t an awful lot but it’s going in the right direction. I wasn’t overweight to start with so didn’t have a lot to lose, I just wanted to reduce my waist size. I’m probably gaining muscle as well with all the extra exercise so probably lost more fat than I realise.

I’m still trying not to eat meat. I’ve eaten it seven times this year, which is an average of once a week and a complete fail as a vegetarian, but a win for a lifelong omnivore like me who loves the taste of pig meat. None of it has been a lot either; little bits of gammon cut up into scrambled eggs, pepperoni pizza, chicken sandwich. It’s not like I’m chomping down on a big bloody steak.

I’m still exercising every day and working my way through C25K. Today I ran for intervals of five minutes which I was immensely proud of as I never thought I could run for five minutes. I know it isn’t a long time, but it is for me! I can walk and walk for miles without getting tired, but normally conk out after 20 seconds of running, so to go a whole five minutes, and do it twice with only 2.5 minutes in between plus two intervals of running for three minutes and I’m very proud of myself!

On the subject of exercise, I think I’m slowly slowly getting better at roller derby as well. During a training session the other week, I managed to get lead jammer against Miss Thunderkiss, who is one of our best jammers and constantly gets awards for Best Jammer for tonnes of games she plays including in the British Champs. So to get lead jammer against her is a massive thing that I’m immensely proud of, even if it was just in a training session. I reckon it shows that I’m getting better.

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And speaking of roller derby in general, a couple of weeks ago there was a game at a tattoo convention where I was manning the merchandise stall. There was a 12 year old girl there who is obsessed with roller derby and is our biggest fan. She asked for the autographs of all the girls who were playing and had her photo taken with them; how cool is that?? Sadly she can’t play until she’s 18 as there are no junior teams within the area so she has to wait another six years.

I had a wander around the tattooists; the noise of 200 people getting tattooed all at once is quite some sound. I picked up a load of business cards and have been in touch with a couple of artists about the tattoo I want. I think I might have found who I want to do mine, I really like her style and think it would suit a pin-up girl. I haven’t seen her do any pin-ups per se, but her other work is awesome.

On Saturday just gone, there were two British Champs games. The first one I was an NSO; I was in charge of timing the penalties, making sure they stayed for the full time and marking down who came into the box and when. It was quite stressful but I’ve now worked on a British Champs game which is very cool.

The second game was my team. I was filming the game as it’s a requirement for all British Champs games, so I couldn’t watch it properly but they won which is a brilliant achievement as it’s their first game since being promoted to tier three so are playing against much better teams.

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Valentine’s weekend, we had sexy times! It’s only been four months since the last time so that’s a massive improvement. The last two times I got all excited and took a pregnancy test, but I’m not going to waste my money or have any expectations this time, I’m not even ovulating yet. I read an article that said if you’ve never been pregnant by the time you hit 30 (which was four years ago), chances are you have low fertility and it’s unlikely you’ll ever get pregnant. I don’t know if this applies even if you’ve never had unprotected sex, but it’s made me kind of sad anyway. I get enormously jealous when I hear about other people’s pregnancies and babies but maybe I’m going to have to start making my peace with the fact that it may never happen to me.

We went out for a lovely meal on Saturday night. I went for the veggie options and stupidly had gnocchi in a blue cheese sauce for my main meal. It was delicious, however it’s VERY stodgy and claggy to have as a main meal and I couldn’t finish it.

As a Valentine’s gift, I bought Jay a pin he asked for. It’s in the shape of a Spitfire and is made from the Rolls Royce engine of a Spitfire which fought in World War II. It cost £55 and is absolutely tiny so he better hadn’t lose it!

He bought me some lovely shoes which I only put on my wish list a few days ago. These are they.
I’m struggling to walk in them because the heels are too low, haha! However I think it’s probably something I’m going to have to get used to as I’ve recently developed arthritis in my big toe on my right foot and it’s becoming increasingly painful to wear high heels as I can’t bend the toe back very far anymore. This makes me very sad, I love high heels :o(

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To finish, I will leave you with a rather amusing photo. Roxy the rottweiler, who I walk every day after work, is always excited to see me. If I dare to stop for a chat with her owners, she feels the need to remind me why I’m really there by pushing me with her feet. She doesn’t realise her own strength and, last week, she left me this beautiful paw shaped bruise. (Toes to the left of the image)