Oh at long last. Lady luck has smiled at me with all her teeth showing (how does she keep them so white? You'd think she'd ride her luck and drink heavily and smoke and eat confectionary, her teeth by rights should be dull but oh no, they gleam like the lights of an expensive car in the dead of night in a country lane) anyway I HAVE GOT A JOB! I start on Monday 17th July. Oh happy day. No more will I eat luncheon supplied by ASDA, inhale the fumes of the A40 or look vacantly at the situations in the paper (by the way what is a CAD operator and why do they need so many?) Lola has got a job.
You won't hear much from me other the next two weeks, tomorrow the ladyfriend make for the west country. Yurts are the new black by the way.

Aaah, modern life. I am time poor, I have not had the time to update Lola, not had a minute to reply to emails, I've spent traffic jams sending text messages and shopping, which used to be a pleasureable leisureable experience, has turned into a lightning campaign. I did a whole week's shop in fifteen minutes on Sunday, the ladyfriend sat in the car whilst I supermarket sweeped - it was a soulless experience, I hardly had time to fondle an avocado. The reason I am saying all this is because on Friday the ladyfriend and I are heading off to Cornwall for two weeks, trouble is, before we can begin our summer soujorn we have to pack a months worth of activity into three days. The ladyfriend has informed me that I can no longer wear anything white and after tomorrow, nothing coloured. What am I to wear? My scuba gear is already packed. It shall have to be my painter's smock and beret again.
The poor ladyfriend has drawn the shortest straw, because my work takes me away from the family home I shall not be available for the domestic challenges that face us, so it will be up to her to hoover the grass, shop her elderly mother and iron the carpet. I've got off quite lightly.
So Cornwall for two weeks! A fortnight of salty windblown hair, ruddy cheeks and carefree summer evenings. Yurts are trendy, camping is cool, it said so in the Sunday Times. Reducing your carbon footprint is all the rage. I do prefer to be on the upsurge of a trend however because of it I expect the roads of Cornwall will be chock a block with yummy mummies in camper vans with kids called TinkyChops and Marrakesh. We shall see......

I didn't tell you did I? In fact I have only just been able to bring myself to tell anyone that I was violated in the car park at ASDA Park Royal. It was last week, I was driving through the lines of parked cars to find a space and stopped whilst there was a hold up. Suddenly a man in a white car reversed out of a space, kept on reversing although I was there and could move neither hither or thither and smacked into one of my flanks. I parked my battered motor and went to find the chap with pad and pencil and he had sped off into the distance. If held out I'd have to say he was probably an illegal immigrant with no right to be parking in Blighty let alone shopping in ASDA in the first place. I dare say he didn't have the necessary documentation or insurance to drive anyway and had I managed to challenge him I would have been punched or worse still stabbed as that seems to be the fashion these days. It is not a long held fantasy of mine to appear on the front of the Daily Mail and to have my murder in association with ASDA Park Royal sends a shudder up the spine.
On a lighter note (in more ways than one) it's the Summer Solstice today, so enjoy today as it's down the helter skelter into the darkness from now on.

Had a very nice weekend - although I am yet to fully recover from a bout of binge drinking on Saturday night - the Ladyfriend and I went down to Eastbourne where we got to try out our new beach tent. It's fantastic, it protects you from the harmful rays of the sun, the page flicking wind and the gaze of flabby teenagers. It is a revolution for the ladyfriend and I as normally we cart chairs, parasols, rugs, cans of ginger beer, sandwiches, a kite and a favoured broadsheet down to the seashore. Now all we need is the tent and a rug, a bag of provisions and Bob really is your uncle. It also combines all the fun of camping and the seaside in one fabulous hit. I'm just amazed it took us so long.
On Saturday night we went to see Michelle and Sarah, two spinsters of the parish of Brighton, where I have been partly converted to the ipod (for home use only) I couldn't work the damn thing but I did enjoy the selection of music which was available. It does take out the furtive fumbling for a cd in the fading light of a summer evening but I'm still yet to be fully sold on them. My latest surrender to the 21st century is the need for a contract mobile phone .I'm window shopping at the moment but it doesn't sit well with me. Next I'll be wanting broadband, sky tv and a wide screen television - oh God forbid.

Has the perrier gone straight to my head? I've been watching England in the World Cup. The Ladyfriend got a bit nasty. She knows her stuff. Sven should have pulled them all off at half time. Not that nice Mr Beckham though, we like him. No, it's Lampard that gets the bums rush on our sofa at the moment. To be honest I've found this world cup a bit lack lustre, the BBC theme tune isn't a hum dinger, the ITV lot look like the dregs left in the Legion at closing time and the camera man that films the matches looks better placed to assasinate a passing president than film a sporting occasion so high up is he I'm surprised he can breathe. The only thing I do like is the font that the players have on the back of their shirts, it's very nice, but then fonts are nice, I notice fonts, I notice nasty ones and nice ones, rounded ones and sharp ones, dated ones and ones that are pleasing to the eye, my favourite fonts are the ones that look like nice handwriting but it's not comic sans. I forget what it is, there is one that has an 'a' that looks like the 'a' my primary school teacher used to write and it transports me back as soon as I see it...write, I'm off, there is still a little wine left and half a bakewell tart, Lola is pissed. Oh, life tends to come and go As long as you know Know, know, know, know

Ipods, I don't get it. Back in the 80's people walked around with Sony Walkmans, the craze went away and now it has returned with ipods. I don't understand. I see people with white wire dangling around their necks and 'tut tut'. A girl was driving behind me today and I could see when I took my occasional glance in the rear view mirror that she had two white lumps hanging off her ears. At first I thought she may be deaf but realised that those sort of hearing aids are no longer dished out on the NHS (more's the pity - I personally like to recognise a handicap instantly in a crowd, you know where you are and are prepared for THAT voice when they talk to you)
Anyway, why did she have to listen to an ipod whilst driving? I've seen others with them walking short journeys, waltzing around the shops, jogging. Surely life is noisy enough not to inflict it on yourself 24 hours a day. The greatest sound is mother nature taking a deep sigh, the sound of the blackbird is top of my hit parade.
It's all a fad which will pass. I reckon Cliff Richard should dust down his rollerskates and re-release 'wired for sound' That will have 'em one, the sales will plummit over night. To be honest, half the time I reckon these people have only bought the headphones and not the actual device. It's all for show, did you know they make them in Shenzhen and the workers are on £27 a month or something like that. It was in the Daily Mirror today, they live in dorms and work 15 hour shifts, the production line never stops, poor sods......shuffle that with your conscience.

Whilst I've been doing this freelancey thing I've had to send emails here and there all over Europe. I've had to interact with people with funny names in Uzbekistan and the like, I even had a phone call from the Black Sea! Anyway, one thing that has hit home is the amount of my communication that is peppered with phrases that no one outside of beautiful Britain would understand. Things like 'cut the mustard', 'smashing' that kind of thing. I'm sure if I wrote 'horse has bolted' the people in Moscow would think the cold war had started again. So I've had to tread careful with my grammar (there I go again). As a consequence my emails have lost all decoration. They look cold and remote. I did think I was getting somewhere with a French man but we had to revert back to basics when I realised I was leading him up the garden path......lord I've done it again. I challenge all Lola readers to go a day pretending you are talking to someone from Eastern Europe (mind you, you probably do anyway, if the Daily Mail is to be believed they are all over here stealing our jobs and eating our women or something like that) anyway, have a go, don't use any phrases that would make them not see the wood for the trees and see how you get on.

Today Life For Lola is rattling the tin of charity under your noses. My friend Ushma (the official face of the World Cup) is doing one of those running about things for titty cancer and all that and through the magic of the internet you can donate money so she can hit her target. She's ever such a nice lass, the only brown girl in the office, keen and ever so jammy. She's even interviewed Tony Blair.....and lived!
Anyway, here is the link www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/ushmamistry you can give as little or as much as you like. I know my readers are kind, considerate and generouse - even if I didn't get my Figaro car.
I'm afraid you wont catch me doing that sort of thing as I'm not built for speed so I wont go asking for you to dig in your pockets again. Go Team Ushma!

I don't think that I'm thinking ahead enough. Yesterday in ASDA's I was sandwiched at the till between an two old gummers. The one behind me had a pint of milk and four tins of cat food in her basket. The lady in front had a tin of lentil soup and a bag of watercress and that was it. I felt a bit bad. These women were obviously finding the times hard. My smoothie alone would blow their household budget and turn any thoughts of an annual trip to Weymouth seem out of the question. I'm sure these women in their younger days would, like me, splash out on fancy trinkets and horse brasses and now they watch the pennies through their failing eyesight.

I have not really wanted to bring up the subject of Sharon Osbourne but whenever she does spring to mind I do feel a lump coming back up the throat. I've never been keen, there is something a bit downmarket about a woman who seems so desperate to sell herself, splatter herself across the tabloids like pigeon sh*t on Lord Nelson. No, she's not my cup of mushroom tea. The Rebecca Loos fiasco was toe curling. It reminded me of situations I have found myself in when two women start having a go at each other (offices are a breeding ground for such sort of behaviour) in pubs when pints are hurled, outside school gates, in traffic jams, and every time I have looked on in startled disbelief. Hand bags at dawn, not on national tv.
Mrs Osbourne is as common as muck, she's the sort that 'go up that school' and sort out teachers who punish their children. That tart with a heart routine she pulls with the under priveliged and tone death is wearing a bit thin from where I'm standing. I had to slam shut the Daily Mail last week because she was pictured squeazing the junkie breath out of some spotty kid on heroin in that "I understand luv, I've been there darling" and with every snap of the camera shutter sales of her auto-biography go up and up.
I had her cards marked when she gave that diddy koy Tabby the run of the house, it wasn't long after that she became the face of ASBO, patting her backside at all that money she was pretending to save the Chavs at the checkout. Then followed the Sunday paper headlines orchestrated to boost her profile and all those bottles of Henna - urrgh, ghastly woman.

Had a smashing weekend. The Ladyfriend and I were supposed to take our usual trip to the coast but we decided to take advantage of the good weather and spend time on the garden. The grass had grown so high that we were beginning to stick out like sore thumbs in the street. You can be an unmarried mother, inject heroin in the corner shop and beat your wife to a pulp but nothing brings greater shame than letting your lawn grow too high.
It took ages, the woman next door kept hanging out her washing which had been laced with cheap fabric conditioner, it was too much. The lovely natural smell of cut grass mingled with the synthetic stench of Unilever's laboratory and I wasn't happy. Anyway, it's done now, we can leave the house without dark glasses and the threat of social disgrace.
The weekend was peppered with family visits. Oliver the Great popped in (pictured above)on Saturday with the Thatcham Massive and today we scoffed sausage sandwiches with Amy, the nicest niece. A smashing, unexpected weekend. We are now officially on a Four Week countdown to the Yurt by the way.