Some very good friends bit the dust last night and got engaged. It is very exciting and thrilling news.

Amusingly, it has prompted some serious panicking from The German. He’s the last one of his close friends to hit the ground on bended knee and pop that question, you see.

After consulting my crystal ball, I can confirm two things.

The first is that I’m quite happy for him to hold out for a good while yet. The second is that this fact will not prevent me from winding him up at every available opportunity. And recruiting everyone else we know to do the same. Feel free to take a cheap shot in the comments section, dear readers.

Poor bastard.

I’ve just returned from the most marvellous session with my chiropractor.

My neck has been crunched four times, the back three times and my right hip once.

However, there was a small moment of horror when he told me that adjustments to the neck have an approximate one in five million chance of causing a stroke.

I still signed the consent form, but I can’t pretend my stomach didn’t somersault at the thought of coming home with a face like melted wax.

Newton Faulkner revolts me.

FACT.

I’m not racialist against the gingers, ho no no.

It’s the disgusting dreadlocks and his butchering of Massive Attack’s gorgeous Teardrops that makes my toes curl.

Get thee gone, Devil in hippy disguise.

Do you ever wonder where the people you went to school with ended up?

Thanks to Facebook and its evil ilk, much of the mystery has been smash-and-grabbed into oblivion with hourly updates such as, “Lily has just given birth to twins and is not sure the surgeon ’stitched her up like a virgin’ as requested.”

However, there are some sensible souls (and I am ashamed I cannot count myself as one of their number) who never signed themselves up for social networking in the first place. And thus, they remain an untapped source of, ‘Oh my God, she was always so shy at school!’ influenced shock/awe/disgust.

So imagine my glee when I stumbled across the life path of one such former classmate.

Guess what she does? She’s only office bitch for a Page 3 girl agency in the heart of London’s Soho. Given that I know where she comes from, this career path certainly indicates a fall from grace.

Mummy must be sobbing into her cashmere pillow.

I have an objection.

This is to being called ‘babe’ by the man in the newsagents when I enter his premises to purchase fags and soya sauce. (Staples of a freelance life, you know. Along with Diagnosis Murder and Haribo.)

I am no one’s ‘babe’. Not even The German’s. Being given such a moniker is an unsavoury reminder of a vile ex boyfriend and the fact that when it comes to the endless battle to enforce appropriate behaviour, some men clearly need their trenches redigging.

Apparently this overfamiliarity is a sign of the times. More a folded down corner on the cultural page than a direct attempt to piss me off.

But just because someone else is jumping of a cliff into an abyss of social incongruity, does not mean I have to as well.

Eyes front and hands where I can see ‘em, boys.

I know it’s not very genteel of me to say so, but I fucking hate my neighbours. You’ll soon see why.

Specimens 1 & 2

South African couple. Live downstairs. Play shit ‘world’ music at full volume. Shout at each other over shit ‘world’ music, instead of turning full volume down.

He and she leave for work at 7.25am and 7.30am respectively. He and she slam inner and front doors separately, in quick succession, as if in blind rage and attempting to rip doors from hinges. Wall behind inner door is now dented and about to crack like a Californian fault line. My alarm clock is rendered useless.

Fucking inconsiderate twunts.

Specimen 3

Unemployed, BNP voter next door. Married, one son, looks like a pitbull. Beats his wife. (Probably.)

Pride and joy is a vintage Jaguar. Dark blue, leather trim, walnut dash. Kept under wraps to presumably protect against scratching and vagaries of British weather.

Woke whole street up at 2am on Tuesday morning roaring, “OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR! OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR, YOU C*NT!!!” and bashing on the driver door of a Peugeot 206 parked outside his house.

Turns out Peugeot 206 had accidentally nudged gift-wrapped and beloved Jag. Pitbull continued intimidating shouting at full volume for 15 minutes, while attempting to drag Peugeot driver out of car, presumably to rip them to shreds with his bare hands.

And how did Pitbull see that Peugeot 206 had dared to breathe on his car at 2am?

Because he was sitting in his house, staring at the damn car like a demented watchman, that’s why. Just waiting for a reason to go absolutely fucking postal.

Atrocious, eardrum-perforating music and certified psychopaths. Welcome to my manor, readers.

I’m fucked, aren’t I?

Hmmmm. Interesting goings on in the Ladyshambles bathroom this morning.

Last night, I and a group of fabulously talented ex-colleagues and dear friends, known collectively for the sake of this blog as The Lab Rats, visited vegetarian gastric outpost Manna Restaurant.

You see, one of our party is a vegetarian. He is a bilker of burgers; he cold shoulders the cutlets. Steaks? Eschewed and unchewed. But since the last venue for our soiree was one of London’s finest meat emporiums, we thought it only fair to sample the delights of all things herbivore.

While the food was surprisingly good - the kitchen positively excelled itself with the organic fruit crumble - this morning it appears we’re all suffering from a force eight gale in the bowel and more burn than even Jane Fonda would recommend.

I’m afraid as lovely as this carnivore’s jaunt down the tofu track was, I’m heading back to commune with the cows.

It might take up to three days for a juicy slab of sirloin to wend its way through my colon, but quite frankly, when it comes to digestion, I’ll eat the hare and hitch a ride with the tortoise.

Today I swallowed my gargantuan fear of all things ‘finance’ and did a spring clean on the old Ladyshambles books.

The story begins with this one, simple truth: at school, I was utter bobbins at mathematics. This was compounded by the fact I was saddled with a startling array of fucking awful maths teachers. They ranged from the pitiably incompetent, through to those who were arguably belched forth from the bowels of hell by Beelzebub himself. (Especially you, Mr Ian White, especially you.)

Even today, the mere mention of an improper fraction is enough to make me come out in a flesh-eating, icy cold sweat. And what the hell is one of those anyway? Why is it ‘improper’? Perhaps it arrives to a dinner party half cut, touches up the host’s wife and declares the beef uncommonly tough, while sliding off its chair and spilling vintage port all over the Axminster.

Fast forward more than a decade and I’ve only just trained myself into opening my bank statements the day they arrive.

Top tip: I reward myself. For example, open the bank statement (the donkey) and you are allowed a glass of wine (the carrot). Simple, yet effective.

So it was with heavy heart, and the rare appearance of adult responsibility, that I hit the figures with the kind of force only a 34E bra and a bull-in-a-china-shop attitude can deliver.

And would you Adam and Eve it: I’m not going to die of poverty (although that ending does hold a certain misguided romantic appeal). The comings are regular and the goings don’t exceed them.

Now I feel positively vindicated in drinking a whole bottle of something red and fruity.

And it ain’t Robinson’s Apple & Blackcurrant.

I’ve had a spate of running into people I know on the tube of late.

These are not people who I know well and who I would like to talk to.

These are people I have a vague association with and would rather not see, especially at 8.45am when I am quite clearly doing something that requires the kind of mammoth concentration that is not to be broken. Like applying make-up, napping or perhaps frantically dabbing coffee stains out of my top. (Why is a spillage always around the boob area? Specifically the nipple area? So I look like I’m touching myself up when I’m actually just clearing up?! Argh.)

It’s always people who I know vaguely because of an old job, or a friend of a friend of a friend, or that girl from uni who’s a right pain in the arse. I have nought to say to them: apart from the usual soul-destroying shared vague recounting of what someone you both vaguely know may or may not have done at a house party five years ago, that you have a vague recollection of being at.

So this morning, as the Victoria line burrowed its way ever deeper into the chest cavity of our capital, I decided to take a stand.

I peered cautiously over the top of my paper and caught sight of a kid who used to be a text jockey at my old company. He hadn’t seen me. So I gathered up my belongings and barged my way down the entire length of the carriage. No mean feat considering it was busier than Ulrika Johnson’s womb.

So, no awkward hello. No stilted conversation to be aborted at the first sign of an exit.

Also probably monumentally rude. But I can live with that. It’s mindless small talk with a virtual stranger that ruins me.

Why is it that when I’m a bit peckish, I can’t just eat one chocolate digestive?

Why instead, do I stuff down seven and then spend the next half an hour imagining my thighs are growing exponentially?

I do not understand where this greed and lack of temperance comes from.

It’s the same with:

Wine
Always completely unable to recognise when the party is over. Everyone’s going home completely lambasted on port and I’m sat there nonchalantly smoking a fag, declaring, “I’m hardly pissed at all, where the fuck are you losers going?”

Shoes
Blown the wages on a new pair? Might as well go the whole hog and buy another then. Yes, and live on 2-4-1 Asda bargains and disgusting cheap wine for the rest of the month. (But at least my feet look bloody fantastic.)

Sleep
I can’t just have the normal eight hours. Ho no. I get right narky if I haven’t been able to horizontally laze around for at least an hour either side of the actual sleeping. As a result, I operate at low-level pissed off the majority of the time and despise those smug twats who hop out of bed all cheerful in the morning, and then who drop off to sleep the moment their heads hit the pillow. They can all go fuck themselves.

So to conclude: I lack discipline in every sense.

If I hadn’t spend all my cash on parties and shoes, and missed countless working hours (and therefore extra dollars) because I was hunkered down eating zzzzzzzz’s, I’d send myself off to a very expensive bootcamp for some serious whipping into shape.

As this is not an option, I shall simply patiently wait for my mid-thirties and pray the passage of time instills some self-control.