A nice thing happened the other day. The Ladyfriend and I were in Debenhams, Eastbourne on Saturday as we had decided to nip up to the restaurant for lunch - a little known fact, I like department stores - anyway the food is served on the top floor just off of the children's department so we hopped on the escalator (I know it's not healthy but we were burdened with apathy) We were going up and in mid flight I turned around to see an Elf smiling up at me! I was slightly taken aback but then even more so as behind the Elf was Father Christmas! It was slightly unsettling but incredibly exciting at the same time. We watched later whilst we chomped on our chips as kids lined up to enter the grotto.

It is my opinion that the band The Feeling sound like an all male version of Voice of the Beehive.

From M&S With Love - Marks and Spencer

I want this record!

The Ashes have started and as we don't have prescription tv we don't get to see it. Instead we have to listen to snippets on the radio and read about our boys in the paper. I quite like it. It's a bit like the old days when world events like battles, earthquakes and the like took days to reach the public. Australia suddenly seems so very far away.

A weird thing happened today. I was driving to work and a ten year old school girl (I guessed) looked the spitting image of a girl I used to go to school with. It was a bit spooky but then I thought that perhaps it could be that girl's daughter, which could happen and she would have passed on her genes and all that. Anyway, I quite liked the idea. That was until I saw following being her ANOTHER girl who looked like another old classmate! It was bizarre. They were clearly friends too. I didn't like it. Were they the children of my old friends or are there limited permiatations of childrens faces? Or, did I slip through a wormhole into the past? Makes you think.

It pains me to say it but the Ladyfriend and I are really rather hooked on this "I'm a celebrity get me out of here" thing. We started watching it for Minnelli. You should have seen us poised at the telephone to make David suffer. Trouble is, now we love him and we love the programme. I feel I've let Liza with a Z down but let's face it, she let herself down on Parkinson - did anyone else see her do the sign language song?

A weekend of fresh air, oranges and a wee small baby. Yesterday we went off to Saville Gardens in Windsor for a autumnal forage. I took photos whilst the ladyfriend filled her trug with all manner of nuts, berries and fallen leaves : you can see the pictures by clicking here. In the evening we set off into the darkness and drove down to Swindon to visit Oliver the Great (pictured) who is gorjuice. Today has been spent catching up with my Christmas preperations, I have got a couple of oranges sliced and drying in the oven as I type in my wi-fi kitchen - thanks be praised to the neighbours. I read about a new way of reducing the juice and cutting down on oven time but I decided to ignore it, put my chops to it and sucked the slices instead.

Cubby Broccoli must be rolling around in his grave. I refer ofcourse to the new James Bond film. Why oh why is it not being released next year? Why could they not wait a couple of months and bring it out in 2007? Two double O seven? Madness, a marketing dream and they miss it. I daresay they will bring out the whole collection on DVD or somesuch thing next year but aint it a shame that they don't bring the film out then instead? I am quietly shaken....and stirred.

Suddenly the world seems a safer place today. God bless America.

They've opened one of those Primark stores in Eastbourne. It's a huge air hanger of a shop stuffed to the brim with cheap imported throw away fashion. Bargain basement bras etc. The Ladyfriend and I went and had a look on Monday. I didn't like it. There was something about it that made me think of cheap chicken. It was like a huge battery farm where poultry sold for less than the price of a couple of Blackjacks are bred. The rails were packed with the misery of cheap labour and groaned with the sound of the cries of the British manufacturing industry. We'll be sorry. Demand free range clothes, look for the Kite mark!

I've been under the weather. Full of infection, chesty and horse. At my lowest point I spent broken nights sleeping on the sofa flicking through an underworld of the strangest television programmes I've ever seen. I took myself off to the Doctor who was less than sympathetic, my symptoms mirrored hers and she was clearly of the school that if she could be at work so could I. She said "I'd offer you a Locket but I've only got one left" Still she was right, ten days since my darkest hour the infection seems to have gone. I'm left with the occasional throaty rattle which I can cope with.