I've become a bit addicted to smoothies - not home-made ones, although I do have a smoothie maker - but shop bought ones, in particular the Innocent ones. I've been popping one in my basket for my lunch every day, slurping it down and then chucking the plastic bottle in the back of the car. Those little bottles soon add up. I looked in horror this evening and felt a tinge of regret blush my cheeks. I felt like one of those alcoholics when the truth hits home when they hear the rattle of the voddy bottles when they put the bin bags out. I feel bad because I've heard through the grapevine that these little bottles don't get re-cycled. Apparently a big container ship comes over with cheap jeans from China unloads dockside and then gets refilled with all our plastic bottles. These then return and get burnt in some village in the far east. A thick toxic cloud forms which in turn falls down as acid rain and much more besides. So you see, a little de-tox can have monstrous repurcussions. Think on, do you really need that echinacea?

We had hailstones this morning in Eastbourne, hailstones! On Bank Holiday Monday, not happy. Yesterday we had a nice day, the Ladyfriend and I took to the seashore, I played in the rock pools and watched as shrimps dashed away from my monstrous hands as I shook their world inexplicably - where was there God now? I thought.
I flew my kite (provided by Sally Swift Photography - for all your photographic needs) kicked the football into the sea by accident, but accidents don't wash with the ladyfriend when it's her shoes that get soaked trying to retrieve it.
I did have a thought though when I was picking up shells (by the way I found two bits of seaglass! Two bits! They are as rare as hen's teeth now people have got all environmental. Time was when you would be able to find lots of nice tide worn glass but not now people take their litter home) ANYWAY, my thought. Pebbles are the only things that look nicest when they are wet. When taken home all dry they loose their beauty, paint looks nicest dry, when decorating you always say "you wait till it's dry it will look great" so does hair, I saw a lady in a fish and chip shop with wet hair and it look unseemly. So there's my thought.

I'm a little bit country and that's why I can't hack this A40 commuting lark. I'm not cut out for the bumper to bumper. This week has been a bit of a shlop on the Westway. I have had these little landmarks which I reach and breathe a sigh as I pass them. I've had the Hoover Building (my favourite building actually) then the big inflatable puppy on the Vangaurd Building but the one that has got on my tits the most is the Marks & Spencer's advert with that stroppy model in black, not Twiggy but the lanky one.
She's wearing some outfit put together by the nimble and exploited fingers of children, she's being paid an eye watering figure but she's got a face like a slapped arsenal fan. I don't like it one bit, it's not something you want to look at at 8.15 in the morning whilst you're being shunted up the jacksy by a clapped out Ford Cortina. It's not just any old ride to work, it's a long, tiring, irritating drive to work.

I feel like Marlon Brando when they lifted him off his death bed with a crane. It's amazing what being office bound does for the figure. I was flitting about here and there before this tempting temping and now I sit like a little Buddha tapping away at a computer all day. The Michelin Man looks positively anorexic next to me. I'm trying to walk about more but the loo isn't far from my desk and the men in ASDA's will be tapping me on the shoulder soon if I skulk about too much on too regular a basis during my lunch break. Hey fatty bomb bomb.

I have tried to encourage all manner of birdies into the garden, I have put out the right kind of seed to lure them all in and by and large I have had a great deal of success but two species still allude me, the Yellow Hammer and the Bull Finch. Guess what I saw today as I queued to get off of the motorway? There amongst the bottles, cans and fast food debris was a bloody Bull Finch. I was rather annoyed. What is it about a noisy, polluted road that's better than my garden? If I could have run the bugger over I would have. By the way Miss BBC with the Yellowhammers like confetti, I've lost your email, write to me and let me know how you are getting on with the breakfast show lola@lifeforlola.co.uk

A merry month of May indeed - Happy 70th Birthday (today) to Super Step Dad and Happy 1st Birthday (yesterday) to nicest niece Amy. If that isn't a reason to open something cold and bubbly then I don't know what is.
Work Update: I'm sort of free lancing, although I have not been asked to joust yet, it's in a riffy part of London and my lunchbreak is one of terror. I sit in the car in the carpark of Asda eating slimey white sliced bread sandwhiches with one eye on the clock and another on the general public (which are generally nasty looking). I slam the door locks down tight shut and keep the window open only a fraction so they can't slip a knife through. It's going well. I get to work from home on Thursday and Friday, I get to toil in my terry towelling dressing gown.

Wow, last night I got back to nature. The Ladyfriend and I went out with Miss Diane and on her recommendation we took a visit to Christmas Common to see the bluebells. I was quite taken aback to see a riot of blue as far as the eye could see, and the smell, my goodness, it was like falling into an old lady's knicker draw full of packets of scented liners bought by grandchildren every year because she made the mistake of saying she liked it once.
It was nature at her most brazen and jaw dropping. It was dusk and the woods were alive with the chatter of wildlife and deer ran amok as we trampled twigs underfoot. It was the highlight of my week and I have no hesitation in saying that. It pays to get back to nature, it's the cheapest form of alternative therapy going. What a sad life it would be indeed without the sound of the wind through a thousand trees.
What topped the evening off was fabulous Greek food which I had always thought was a contradiction in terms. It was a smashing little place in Henley....actually, there were no plates smashing, hmmm......anyway, it was fantastic, the whole evening was fantastic. A tip top Thursday.

I have been up a ladder, I've been painting and because my position was one of elevation the aromas of late spring crept through the open windows and right up my hooter.
Sadly 'her next door' has also been making the most of the sun. She was flopped out caked in chip fat trying to capture a tan. She's eighty a day and instead of the scent of lilac bushes floating in from the garden I got fags, it felt like I was trapped on the beaches of the Costa Del Sol in high season.Horrible.
The warmth of the last two days has brought out a couple of my roses, the grass has leapt like a springer spaniel and the birds have made short work of the bird bath - I am having to top it up regularly with one eye out for the water board.
Talking of birds, we have had a white racing pigeon squatting on our bird table. It won't go away. It's pure white. I am not so sure what to make of it. In some cultures it could mean something sinister like a death on the cards, then again it may induce a win on the scratchies. I am at a loss.

Oooh, I didn't tell you. Lola became a shop girl on Saturday. Before you leap to the wrong conclusion I'm not a till tart, things have not got to that stage yet. I have not applied to the greedy superstores and anyway, I've enforced sanctions with Tesco and the Ladyfriend has too. No, when we went to Hastings we were standing outside a junk shop admiring the, well....junk when the owner looked us over and said "You look like nice people, could you mind my shop whilst I pop out?" I wasn't even wearing a Kath Kidston neckerchief.
So we did it. I was terrified that 1: Someone would shoplift and 2: That something "zany" would happen and I'd end up being filmed for some awful Saturday teatime telly programme presented by a fat girl from Emmerdale Farm. Ofcourse none of the above happened. But it could have. She didn't pay us. She didn't even offer us any junk.

What a weekend, weather was a real treat. The Ladyfriend and I motored along to Birling Gap which is between Seven Sisters and Beachy Head and at low tide is quite phenomenal. You aren't allowed to take pebbles off of the beach as they need everyone of them to protect the cliffs from erosion.
At low tide the sea retreats to reveal an almost lunar landscape of rock pools and boulders. I had my shoes and socks off quicker than you can say slippery sea weed and I was splashing about in no time. It was as warm as bath water, well bath water which has been left for half an hour or more whilst you speak to someone on the phone but warm no less. I can't wait for May 27th, it's national low tide day when the sea goes out the furthest it will go this year, it's speshall and I have my net and Observer Book of the Sea Shore at the ready.

Had my hair 'set' today, I felt ever so tired. The last time I popped in for a do I was bright and bubbly but it was as much as I could do to tip my head back into the basin. I did enjoy having it conditioned though, it is nice when they do that slow rubbing kind of massage thing with their fingers. I could have drifted off to sleep there and then.
On my drive home the sun was high in the sky and there were no clouds to speak of. I popped on my Pink Martini cd and I motored off along the road, stopping here and there for roadworks and the occasional slow cyclist.
A breeze knocked off the blossom from a tree and for a moment I was bathed in a storm of petals to the sound of 'sympathetique' it was quite moving, almost like a Fellini film although I wasn't dressed for such an occasion - but then, who of us ever are?

During the weekend the Ladyfriend and I went to an old priory which had a Celtic open day, you know the sort of thing, people dressed up in itchy looking costumes whilst wearing Adidas trainers, buggering about grinding corn in reconstructed wattle and daub huts. We had a nice time and the weather was kind, we walked around the moat and I noticed how well behaved the children were. There were no tears, no shrill shouting to break the peace of the day and no swearing. They were all happy making clay animals, chucking pretend spears at wooden cut outs of invaders and generally carrying on in a nice way. Perhaps New Labour should encourage this sort of thing in deprived areas of London, bring mud huts to the masses. At one point I saw a mother and child bent down in the long grass, 'oh' I thought 'how horrid, she's going to let her go for a wee infront of us all and put us off our ice cream wafers'. But no, the mother said to her child 'look darling, can you smell that? It's wild garlic' Lola was pleased, perhaps there is hope after all.

I've been a long, long way away - not like Celia Johnson - just down to Eastbourne, glorious Eastbourne but away all the same. The weather has been rather dreary on the coast but the Ladyfriend and I made the most of things. Welcome news was the Wayne Rooney foot thing. I for one will find the World Cup all the more easier to watch without him there. I have always said that I suspect a touch of Downs in the lad and find it a little off-putting watching him dribbling down the touchline. Also, I expect he would lose his temper and get sent off and it will all go down to penalties and we all know that way lies ruin. All we need now is David Beckham to slip a disc and we might stand a chance of winning.