Bloomers are off!

I've given up bread for Jesus. For lent this year I have looked at my daily indulgence and find the one thing that plays a big role in my diet is bread. It's something I (funnily enough) have daily, so I've skipped that line in the Lord's prayer so I'm not led into temptation.
Giving up the sauce would be better but just not workable, I attend too many functions and I would fall at the first hurdle or pop of the champagne cork. So it's bread in all its guises that's been given the heave ho.

Fleeting glances

To the Roundhouse last night to see Fleet Foxes, well to be honest I didn't see much of them because it was a complete sell out and I had standing tickets so for the business end of the concert I was staring and being rammed by other people's business ends. They were exceptionally good and a finer live sound I have never heard - except Eddi Reader of course.
As it was the hottest ticket in town last night I expected a few celebs to be peppered in the audience. The only two I saw however was the Times tv critic Caitlin Moran and BBC regional news presenter Mike Ramsden it was hardly the brace I had in mind, no rubbing shoulders with Marianne Faithful cradling a slimline tonic for me.
I was a very lucky girl leaving the gig however, I was caught by the cops for a misdemeanor in Regents Park. I was let go with a slap on the wrist - after a rubber gloved search - and am left now with a lasting impression and nothing but admiration for the police.

Frankly Mr Shankly

Oscar winner Danny Boyle looks more like Morrissey than Morrissey does himself these days.

On the buses

Got the bus this morning and was taken aback. The driver was English. Now, before you scream Chakrabarti! Chakrabarti! I'm not being racist - some of my best friends are of an Eastern european extraction - it was just a bit of a shock to ask for the stop that I wanted and it being understood. I wondered to myself if this was the start of the mass exodus back to Poland? It certainly was nice to have the English chap drive for a change for two reasons, one he did not drive at breakneck speed and two, the bus was decently late, only five or ten minutes - just enough time for a scone and ginger beer instead of a flask of bloody borscht.

Yes chef!

I happened to watch Master Chef the other night. I'm not keen. I watched it a few years back when it first started back again but was turned off immediately. We should be trying to teach our children to eat properly and that Toad man sets a bad example, it turns my tummy to watch him shovel a spoonful in. Not only have we a nation of latchkey children but a nation of laptray ones and the presenters of masterchef certainly wont get the family back around the table.
Anyway, I digress, what shocked me the most about Masterchef 2009 is how it has progressed from being a slightly more high brow version of Ready Steady Cook to something more resembling the X Factor - one could almost call it "Pot Idol"
"It means everything to me", "Cooking is my life" "It's all I've ever wanted to do" oh dearie me, where have we heard these words before?
And what is this food anyway? can you imagine me serving up froth for the wife? No, no, no.

1000!

This is my 1000th post- yay! But the sad fact is I am devastated. I have had the most dreadful dream. I was married to Hugh FW which under normal circumstances would be a lovely experience, I would be a free range organic bird trotting off to the shops with a blank cheque book but in my dream he was a brute of a man. He caught me straining strawberries by the Aga and my dear readers that was it. I fought back bravely and I shouted that "I'm bored here, you wont let me do anything!" and then I woke up.
Last night the wife and I tried to buy some Bach flower rescue remedy in Tesco, the shelves were clear which I took to be a sharp indicator of how far the Recession Depression had hit. The shoppers in my local Tesco are normally a chipper bunch but clearly things were on the fritz.
The rescue remedy is supposed to chill you out and help in times of anxiety but the label is wrapped around the bottle so you can't see inside. Thing is, you don't know how much you have got left so you are in a constant state of worry that it's just about to run out - if anything is going to get your knickers in a twist then that will.

Have you seen this man?

Peculiar day. I stood at the bus stop this morning and it were as if I had been given a new pair of spectacles because everything seemed so vivid and - dare I say it - beautiful. I was listening to some of my 'housey, housey' music and I looked up into the air at one of the more uplifting movements and a murder of crows streamed over head, it would have brought a tear to my eye were it not for the fact that I am terribly cold hearted.
As I stepped off of the bus (that was late, but no matter) the bus shelter had been messed up with graffiti but instead of my customary 'tut' and resentment I marvelled at the use of purple on a dark green background - almost like the Wimbledon Tennis corporate colours.
Lunch was odd. Shanna and I drove to the local M&S choosing the back roads to avoid traffic and as we weaved our way into the back of the retail park (no swings and slides here though kids) we felt as though we had arrived on a crime re-enactment scene. A young girl was walking with a ruck sack (probably to her death) a BMW raced in front of us and builders straight out of central casting toyed with their lorries, all it needed was an old lady to walk out with a shopping trolley and a yap yap dog and we would be there. It was most peculiar. It was almost too normal to be real.

Who do you think you are?

I’ve been a bit off radar recently because I’ve been climbing my family tree and to be honest I’m a bit stuck up in one of the branches. I’ve joined genesreunited and am trying to hack back and find my ancestors. There’s been no pots of gold yet, no royal blood or notorious criminas (not strictly true but I’m keeping schtum) but I daresay it’s just a matter of time.
And it really is ‘time’. To track people you need to look at the Census reports which were taken every ten years. The 1911 one has just been released and us geneologists have been at it like frenzied piranhas.
My Grandfather Bertie Burnham (what a fab name) managed to marry, have three kids and move to the next street in a decade and it made me wonder how much I have done since 1999......not a huge amount.
What’s great about all this ‘who do you think you are’ stuff is that lots of people have already done the hard work, as I’ve come a bit late to the party great swathes of my tree have been completed so I can just copy and paste – it’s a virtual bloody leylandii.

Look! I filmed ghost children!

One in the eye of a needle for the atheists

You've got to do this

In Bruges for lunch

In Bruges for lunch, originally uploaded by LifeForLola.

Tyred

We were out in the motor today. A car approached us at some speed from the opposite direction. I was shocked, not at the velocity but because the woman in the passenger seat was yawning. She was brazenly yawning, she did not hold her hand to shield her gaping mouth. Why are cars capsules against polite society? Why do people think they can do stuff in them that they would not get away with in company? Men pick their noses, young girls sing at the top of their voices, labourers rearrange their genitals, old men suck on Worthers Originals whilst fingering their ears. Why is it that whatever happens in the Vauxhall stays in the Vauxhall?

Blood on the streets

Strikes have been breaking out across the UK in support of a mass walkout by energy workers in Lincolnshire angry at the use of foreign workers.

I don't know if it is deliberate but one can't help but wonder if the BBC chose this picture because of the nazi right arm? Heil Hitler anyone?

Dial Up, Dial Up

I've had time to consider and I have decided that on the good versus evil see saw of life the internet has hit my rock bottom. Oh where were the luddites in the nineties who could have smashed the Macs?
I awoke quite early this morning feeling fidgety and my young girls thoughts turned to industry (as they do) and I began to wonder about all the good things the internet has brought us (me to you obviously) but the down side too.
Our ability now to book our holidays online has done away with sending an SAE for a brochure, we are able to buy household items at great savings yes but by cutting out the middle men we are leaving gaping holes in the high street.
People need work and I have seen with my own bloodshot eyes how a newspaper that employed two hundred people could slash jobs faster than you can hit 'refresh' when it embraced the web. It is now possible to produce a tabloid in India before tiffin these days, give or take a few spelling mistakes - which makes one wonder if the Guardian have already shipped to Shilpa Shetty.
In the days of expensive dial up and slow download times we became conditioned to scanning pages quickly because time was money, I believe this conditioned society into becoming impatient, wanting everything NOW, skipping to the end and now we have become a monster of greed caught up in a feeding frenzy of imagery.
Sods and their iPods, fat birds in Rotherham emailing jail birds in Texas, me bankrolling the BBC so Babs in California can watch New Tricks on her laptop, the enviromental cost of all this electricity! Oh, you get my drift. I have not even begun to talk about sexual exploitation but to be honest I think I shall leave that stone unturned.

Roll Up, Roll UP

I have just been to lunch with my pal Shanna to the Harvester. We are two girls with one keen eye on our waistline and the other on our purse so we tend to have a visit to the salad cart and a fizzy drink. The one which is not far from work has had a re-fit but they have scrimped on some of the details as some of the wood work looks like a packing crate which has been slapped on the wall with a staple gun - The Ivy it aint.

As we were leaving, a beautiful Jag was making its way out of the car park. It was crammed full with people but on the back seat/driver's side was a little woman - a REALLY little woman. Shanna and I both agreed that the Jag was obviously hers which she had finaced through her work in the circus as she was a thing of genuine wonder and amazement. We imagined several succesful tours in Eastern Europe where she would ride standing on the back of a shetland pony dressed in thick tights (it's chilly in Poland)

Retired now and having amassed a considerable fortune she holds court once a week at the Harvester, she probably treats her friends (there were a good many crammed into the Jag) to a surf and turf on the one proviso that one of them gives her a lift up to reach the salad cart.

Is there anybody there?

I got a slap on the wrist from a psychic at the weekend because I've stopped writing Lola. It's not because I have followers in the next world (perhaps I do, who knows) but apparently this caper is my calling so that's it and all about it. Trouoble is, I'm a bit rusty so I shall make tentative steps to get back on form, imagine me if you will like one of those wheelchair bound people trying to walk again - I daresay I shall shake on the rails and yell "I can't do it!" but I must, who know's I may one day be published in People's Friend.

Why BBC, Why?

I've decided to put fingers to keyboard because yet again the BBC have let me down. I look forward to the Christmas edition of the Radio Times, ok it's the only edition that I buy so you couldn't call me an avid reader by any stretch of the imagination but none the less...Anyway, so the Christmas edition features in the warm glow of my festive fiesta. So imagine my horror when I scanned the shelves for it at the Co-Op. I couldn't see it, it was there but it was the lost in the blur of TV Chat, Not on your nelly telly and the council house favourite The TV Times. Why was it lost? Because they've dropped the beautiful illustration that they used to have. It used to stand out as a bastion of good taste. Gone is the hand painted jolly Christmas scene, in its place is bloody Wallace and Grommit, they may well have replaced it with a picture of Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand. A knife through my heart.

Life for Lola has jumped the shark

SUMMER ART FESTIVAL

The Life For Lola 2thousand&8 festival is here! It's flowing along nicely now we've removed the blockage.

Interlude

We need some time apart, it's not you it's me.