Australian Overreaction
I live with a wonderful Australian woman whom I shall refer to from now on as Sheila (name changed as she is great and I don't want to embarrass her too much!). She has a remarkable talent for overreacting unnecessarily, as I shall demonstrate with the following two tales...

As Sheila lives in the cold grey damp tea-obsessed island known as England, and her family live in the relative paradise of Australia, she flies back and forth a fair amount. On one such flight back to the island that spawned Bruce Forsyth and cricket (one sadly seemingly more popular than the other), she had quite a long lay over in Singapore. So she decided to do some yoga on the roof. (I make no apologies for this, she has a PhD in English, what do you expect?) The roof with a cactus garden. With rather large cacti. The sort of cacti that would push you over and steal your lunch money, if only evolution hadn't cruelly deprived them of legs. She noticed the sign saying "Please do not touch the cacti". "Who would be stupid enough to?!" Sheila thought to herself as she finished her yoga session with a fluorish. A fluorish that resulted on her spearing her wrist on one of the large cactus spines that she had been warned not to touch. Apparently it was bleeding quite a lot, so instead of simply applying pressure, Sheila managed to convince herself that she'd nicked an artery and was now bleeding to death, or would bleed to death on the flight back to chav-ville. So she went to see the airport nurse. ..."I can put a plaster on it for you..." Needless to say, she didn't bleed to death or get blood poisoning.

For the next tale to make sense, we share a 2 bedroom flat on the ground floor of a block of flats in a *very* posh part of Cambridge. Recently, I went out with some friends to a Hallowe'en party. Sleepily and not entirely soberly trying to get back into our flat at 1am, I was somewhat irritated to find that Sheila appeared to have bolted the door and locked me out. Grumbling about the fact that she knew I was going out, I made to knock loudly on the door and wake her up and complain about her lack of reasonable memory when through the door came a panicked "Who is it?!". "It's me," I said as she let me in looking rather rattled. It turned out that she'd heard drilling coming from the hallway so instead of sticking her head round the door to see what was going on, she'd called the police and put on her shoes ready to climb out of the window as she had convinced herself that someone was trying to break in. When the police turned up (I had managed to remove my ears, tail and whiskers and was all ready to apologise for her) it turned out that one of our neighbours in the flat above had locked himself and called out a locksmith who was drilling out the lock. The police asked him for identification and proof that he lived there and then left without getting annoyed at Sheila, which was a relief. However, I still can't look him in the eye when I see him in the hallway, poor guy.

She also thought we might get radiation sickness from our smoke detector.

I have an extraordinary talent for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time but I thought I'd embarrass her and not me.

No apologies for length, 14 hours is the minimum.
(Petite chien is going to do science to it, Sat 20 Nov 2010, 13:41, 11 replies)

Grange Road area?
Or somewhere less central and even more posh?
( Sonic the Hedgetrimmer doesn't care what you think, Sat 20 Nov 2010, 15:22, closed)

Got it in one :P

(Petite chien is going to do science to it, Sat 20 Nov 2010, 17:49, closed)

I lived on Cranmer Road for three years
It was absolutely fucking gorgeous and I miss it.
( Sonic the Hedgetrimmer doesn't care what you think, Sun 21 Nov 2010, 12:01, closed)

It is beautiful
in a different way to Brighton though, which I do miss a bit but not as much as I thought I would. I live just opposite Derby stores - a bad move for my purse!
(Petite chien is going to do science to it, Sun 21 Nov 2010, 12:54, closed)

My consolation
is that I now live in a leafy part of West London which strongly resembles the Grange Road area, only without the shithead students. Win!
( Sonic the Hedgetrimmer doesn't care what you think, Mon 22 Nov 2010, 12:26, closed)

What's this about students?!
:p
(Petite chien is going to do science to it, Mon 22 Nov 2010, 17:38, closed)

Present company excepted, I'm sure

( Sonic the Hedgetrimmer doesn't care what you think, Tue 23 Nov 2010, 16:56, closed)

I am a postgrad
we're not as bad (apparently).
(Petite chien is going to do science to it, Tue 23 Nov 2010, 16:59, closed)

impossible to get radiation poisoning from a smoke alarm
unless you swallow it

contains an alpha emitter you see
(djlumpyrulesok beware of cousin Mosquito and his solo, Sat 20 Nov 2010, 19:12, closed)

However, if you did eat it,
you'd be pretty fucked, although I can't imagine what would convince someone to eat a smoke alarm.
( Colonel Boris "...a desperate Buzzfeed imitation...", Sat 20 Nov 2010, 22:06, closed)

Well, being a science type, I know this
She didn't have a clue and I had to explain it to her.
(Petite chien is going to do science to it, Sat 20 Nov 2010, 23:14, closed)