Monday 12th May. No man's land

Monday 12th May 2008.

Russ wants to go out all the time. Sometimes I don’t take much persuading but it’s got to stop, one because I just can’t afford it and two, I’m getting fed up with it. My boyfriend is addicted to karaoke and it’s not funny.

Jeannie and Nigel have put us in a bit of an awkward position. We’ve found ourselves in the no man’s land between two warring karaoke runners. Mandy and Dan are our friends; we always had a good night when they ran the karaoke. Now Jeannie and Nigel have taken over it’s just not the same. Their books are good and they have a good selection of sings, their sound isn’t bad, but Jennie just doesn’t have Mandy’s personality and the banter isn’t there. They run a tight ship and before you even get to their song lists you are expected to wade through two pages of ‘rules’. Jeannie likes to play the great ‘I am’ and yells at people who she feels are not playing the game accordingly. They don’t drink at all and strongly disapprove of those who do, a far cry from Mandy who is the next Amy Winebottle.

I particularly like two of Mandy’s rules and her reaction when I pointed out their contradictory nature was to pointedly blame her long suffering partner, Nigel.

Rule two: If you can’t find the song that you are looking for in our extensive list, please don’t hesitate to come and ask us if we have it, we have a further ten thousand songs in our database.

Rule fourteen: If you can’t find the song that you are looking for, don’t come and hassle us on the stage. If it isn’t in the book … we don’t have it!

The problems have come about because Jeannie seems to have adopted us as her new best friends. She gave us a lift home one day last week and since then has called in for a brew almost every night, bringing various parts of her family or random friends with her. I can understand that she likes the animals and although sometimes it drives me nuts when I just want a bit of piece I don’t mind because it’s good for the animals whenever they get any extra handling.

It just makes things a bit difficult being stuck in the middle of them. Karaoke runners are like hairdressers, they like nothing better than to pull the competition to bits. Both sides bitch and gossip about the other and I’ve said to each of them separately that I’m friends with both of them and won’t say anything against either of them. I won’t be put in a schoolyard position of having to choose one couple of friends over an other, but I have to say that my loyalties sway in favour of Mandy and Nigel because they’ve been good friends for some time now.

I am back at work and it’s as though I’ve never been away. The shop is still standing, takings were only five hundred pounds down on the week before last when I was working, a drop that comes into the normal line of fluctuation and everything seems to have run smoothly.

I’m irritated with Daz. I got back to find a full television and DVD set up on my cash counting/coffee making table. He didn’t ask my permission to do this and just took it upon himself. The telly doesn’t work because a normal Ariel isn’t powerful enough for some reason and it needs a booster but he can play DVD’s on it. It’s no skin off my nose if he wants to sit in the cold in the back room as long as he comes through s long as the shop bell sounds. I won’t use it because if I want to watch DVD’s I can do so on my laptop. I’m just annoyed that he installed it all without asking my permission first. Maybe I’m just an egomaniac and am being unreasonable.

I know how long the days can seem when you have to do a sixty-six hour week in here. I have my writing and never get bored, Daz hasn’t got a hobby to keep him occupied. Eleven-hour days with no windows and no fresh air can be very wearing. Perhaps I’m hard on the lad for having a go at him for setting himself a telly up. It just seemed to me that he waited for me to be out of the way and went about it sneakily.