Going Nuts in May!

Right now I reckon I'm about one computer crash away from nervous collapse! I'm just about coping, just about breathing, but one minor catastrophe, and I'm going down like a dirty whore!  I'm plainly enduring fairly high levels of stress at the moment because I've managed to leave my favourite hat in one of the cafes I've been working in this afternoon. I loved that hat, but there's no way it's coming back to me. It's too cool. Someone will have nicked it. The next time I'll see it, it'll be hanging off the quiff of some rancid twink down Old Compton Street. I'll ask for it back, but it will cause a fight involving a handbag, fake tan and an eyelash curler! I'm off to another rehearsal tonight with the Fleet singers. I deliberately hung around in Soho after a meeting in an attempt to miss the rush hour, but forgot that rush hour in central London goes on later than it does in the regions.  Tottenham Court Road station was rammed, and to add insult to injury, my Oyster card decided not to work. It's one of the worst feelings in the world. The queue behind me tutted  in unison and angry commuters started to reverse into an ever-growing crowd of people in the ticket hall... and it was all my fault. I'd become one of the people I tut at!  Panicking, I hit my wallet hard on the reader three times, which did the trick. Sometimes you've just got to be firm with inanimate objects to show them who's boss! As I eventually passed through the barriers, an LU staff member came bounding over like Tigger. I thought he was going to tell me off for getting brutal with the card reader, but he actually just wanted to inform me that the Oyster card was probably not working because my Barclay card's chip (or something) was interfering with it. He suggested I try keeping the two cards as far apart in my wallet as possible, which I thought was very good advice. I don't know if  all credit cards cause these problems or if it's specifically just a Barclays phenomenon.  The man sitting next to me on the tube smelt of red wine and cheese, which is a curious and not altogether pleasant aroma outside of a 1970s kitchen! Incidentally, the dreadful piece of music I wrote about in yesterday's blog originates in Mike Leigh's Nuts In May. The original version was meant to be irritating, which makes its incarnation in the advert even more tragic!  14th May, 1662, and Pepys went to see Lady Sandwich at the Wardrobe who was in a fluster about Lady Castlemayne, the King's lover, who was probably the most powerful woman in the country at that time. Lady Sandwich was worried that the King's whore wouldn't give up the reins when Catherine de Breganza was officially crowned. Pepys was worried that she WOULD. He had a major crush on Castlemayne and wanted her to be endlessly happy, whatever that entailed!