Builders and Beaus !

The weekend was a strange one – two days of running around doing stuff that you really don’t want to do – you know errands that you keep putting off. I found to my displeasure my favourite cobbler has gone out of business.

Also the little dry cleaner I've used for the last five years has been taken over by a surly father and daughter team.

Their combined cutomer service is so minimal, that having watched them ignore four customers in a row, I turned tail and left - if anyone knows of a good dry cleaner in Central London please let me know!.

Then I had a casting for a new builder. My bathroom which has stuttered and started so many times in the last three years, in its transition from dingy peach suite hell, to boutique hotel heaven that it has now hit epic proportions.

Walls and ceilings have been stripped, wiring has been done (three times!!) and now flooring and the installation of a delectable new suite are all that remain to be done, before the transformation can be deemed complete.

There’s something about builders when you open the door and during the course of the conversation they realise that you are a single female, which somehow always means you end up being charged a little bit more, usually because they don’t expect you to have any idea of price and what the specific requirements of the job are.

Over the space of three quotes, the sums quoted veered between £400 - £500 in difference for exactly the same job ! I have one more prospective builder due to ‘audition’ and this time F has agreed to be at my place when he arrives, so that this particular Bob the Builder doesn’t get the temptation to add a few more zeros onto his quote.

Sometimes you can be a little too honest. I always think my romantic reviews are fair, but I have just discovered there are those that might think otherwise and even be offended by my candour, which is entirely their pregative.

Mr Big has found out my alias (well it’s hardly top secret is it, especially with my picture plastered alongside it) read the blog and is annoyed. Very annoyed. So much so that we are no longer on speaking terms, well just polite phrases like ‘good morning’ and ‘thank you’

It’s a real shame, but looking back on what I wrote I didn’t put anything rude and more importantly unfair. He is short (it’s a fact!) he is massively successful, charming and therefore totally eligible as friend and then well who knows what else. I am sad I have upset him, but as they say that's the way the cookie crumbles.

While communication with Mr Big was going down in flames and another less candidate has come to the fore. For the past two weeks, I have been setting up various meetings for my current boss.

In the midst of these I’ve struck up a friendship with one of them. Ordinarily and having been burnt in the past, from the old ‘dating in the workplace’ moment, I would have run a mile, but as I leave my current employer on Friday and we are having coffee next week there’s no harm in that right?