I saw a disaster unfurl infront of my eyes this morning. On my way to work I see a lady take her kids to school every day. They use one of those four by four type things which she just about fits her two small children in. This morning I looked up to see her opening her door, I looked down to see her Chelsea tractor waiting, I looked back up and saw her mouth agape, I looked back down to see that someone had stuck a pair of pink balloons under her windscreen wipers. These were not just any balloons, they were novelty balloons fashioned to look like a pair of ladies knockers. They flopped about in the steady breeze as the young mother stood frozen to the spot, how would she explain them to her kids who would doubtless want to keep them?

I have a habit of listening to snippets of other people's conversations and picking up the wrong end of the stick.
I just walked out of Tesco and took my normal route back to work which involves going passed a bus stop. On most occasions there are a number of pensioners there who have spent the best part of their pensions on pick and mix, stout and those horrid rotisserie cooked chickens which sweat in their plastic bags.
Today didn't disappoint. There were three old gents waiting for the bus, one man stood in the middle, both hands in pockets thrusting himself out as though he were about to deliver a speech of epic proportions. He gazed whistfully and said "I'd like to get my hands on Jim's wife at some point" Well, you can just imagine what ran through my mind.
Was this an admission of some long held sexual attraction which might one day soon come to fruition or was Jim's wife about to be phoned up and invited for a rubber of bridge? I will never know.

This Yoga business, I thought it was a gentle exercise which would make me all lithe and lovely with minimum effort, well I was wrong. Today I feel as agile as stephen Hawkings. Ten minutes of this is what's done it.
I found this on You Tube yesterday. It's one of those flash mob things: At exactly 3:30pm on a secret cue, almost everyone in the square froze. The few bewildered tourists didn't know what was happening. For 5 minutes the participants held their positions, and then magically everyone unfroze.
I love that kind of thing, I've signed up so I get invited to the next one, I want to go to the mass pillow fight.

Did the Nigella Salmon Escalopes with Watercress on Monday night which was simple yet effective. I'd give it 8 out of 10. If you're a heavy smoker I'd give it a miss as the dressing is on the subtle side.
Got my hands on Delia's new book and it's fabulous but her use of Aunt Bessie's cannon of frozen produce doesn't sit well. Frozen mash???!!! Discs of frozen mash???!!! My forrays into the frozen aisle of the supermarket are few and far between, I dip in for prawns and peas so I have yet to sample the cornucopia which Delia says is there, we shall have to see.

I've been a bit down in the dumps today. I went to the park and sat on a bench and in the sun at lunchtime to try and cheer myself up. It sort of worked. An old lady passed me on the way to the shops. I sat there long enough to see her return. It's one of those shops that have thin white plastic bags so I could see what she had bought. She had a tabloid newspaper and a bottle of white wine. I can only imagine what kind of afternoon she had in store.

Happy Valentine's Day

Friday is D Day. Delia's new book is out. If you go onto her website there is a ticker which says "Delia's back in 1 day, 9 hours, 55 mins and 3 seconds" fantastic. My book is on pre-order with Amazon.
Of course it's going to put me in a bit of a countdown conundrum with Nigella so things could get a little sticky for me in the kitchen. I will have Delia in one had and Ms Lawson in the other I shall be like a rose between two thorns.

My photos of Bruges are here ready and waiting for you. They are quite nice but I don't think they convey how bitterly cold it was. Nothing can.
At the gym yesterday and I actually saw someone fall off a running machine! It actually does happen, real life slap stick in a Norman Wisdom styley. Ofcourse we all ignored it, no one rushed to the poor sod's aid which is probably how he would have preferred it anyway. No one really talks at the gym, which I think is probably for the best. On the rare occasion that the wife comes I have to tell her to put a sock in it.
Tomorrow night we are starting Yoga for beginners. I'm beside myself with excitement. I like a bit of that body is a temple stuff, I feel I may develop a mania for it.

Been a bit lax but I've still been 'a cookin'. We've done the Chicken schnitzel which was so good we made it twice and the Steak slice with lemon and thyme which was PHE-NO-MENAL! oh and the mirin glazed salmon again when I wasn't in the mood for a shock.
However, this weekend the lovely Mark and Tim took us away to Bruges (pictures to follow) and what a fantastic time we had. It was my first time in Flanders but it wont be my last. We were treated to a dinner which I swear to God was out of this world. It beat Nigella hands down, we had the most incredible pigeon breast, it was a taste sensation. I will now eye the bird table with avid interest, and the blood sport magazines.
I've left the best to last though, have a look at the hotel we stayed in Yesterday morning I woke up in Colin Farrell's bed, no, don't worry, I haven't been another notch on the bedpost of the Oirish womaniser! Last year he stayed in our suite whilst filming "In Bruges" - I shall dine out on that one for a long time!

To Camden last night to see Morrissey so no Nigella. Mind you, in the spirit of 'express' my handsome brother and his wife and I walked from Marylebone to Baker Street scoffing a Cornish Pasty 'on the hoof' if you squished your eyes up I could have easily resembled Ms Lawson dashing to pick the kids up from jazz tap.
Morrissey ofcourse was sensational although I am getting too old for support acts, this lot were called Girl in a coma and were a trio of angry ladies from Texas. They were rather out of kilter with the Morrissey sound which made me beg the question why support bands can't match genre like cinema trailers reflect the certification of a feature film. Anyway, it was a smashing night, one to bore the grandchildren with.

Calabrian Lamb Cutlets

Did the lamb last night which was top dollar. It was a little bit of a tight squeeze ramming nine cutlets into my modest pan but Lola pulled it off, it was a joy.
To Camden tonight to see Morrissey, ooh la la and on a school night aswell! I was standing at the bus stop this morning listening to the new Kylie Minogue cd and knew deep down that Morrissey would be disappointed with me. I hope they don't make mp3 player spot checks on the door and not let me in.

I've lost count of my Nigella it's a knockout. I've done the Butternut Squash With Pecans & Blue Cheese which didn't go down too well, the Mirin-Glazed Salmon was a hit but the rib sticking stir fry with cannellini beans was a blot on Nigella's copy book - na da, na da, na da!
Cooking has ceased to be a joy, or rather eating has, since I had a new filling on one of my back four on Tuesday. The man was nothing more than a butcher! I think I've been overfilled and I think it will be months before I've ground it down to a sensible level. I did think though, whilst he was packing it in if, like the master craftsmen who built our splendid cathedrals, he had left a little mark as a signature on his work. I may have a grotesque smiling face or two dogs fornicating scratched into my molar....you never know.

Oh the boskyness!

Did the Red Prawn and Mango curry on Friday and nearly blew the Wife's head off, I was a little heavy handed with the thai curry paste and so it was downhill all the way after that. I marked it ten out of ten though and there's some left which is now in the freezer for Ron.
Last night though was magnificent. We were supposed to be going out but after spending an afternoon in Marlow we felt we had been exposed to enough that was ritzy and so I grabbed Nigella with both hands. The Wife gave out a little protest that perhaps we could just buy a pizza but one look from me was enough.
And thank goodness because I made "Linguine with lemon, garlic and thyme mushrooms" and I swear to God it was amazing. I've worked out my tablespoons are a little on the side of portly as there was more salt than on the back of a grit truck but I intend to remedy this by buying one of Nigella's official ones. I think it's best, especially after Friday's curry.

Mustard Pork Chops

Got my mouth around Nigella's chops last night and I have to say they were a taste sensation! The wife and I marked it ten out of ten. More than the canellini bean fishy thing which was nice, don't get me wrong, but we felt it needed a little more ooomph.
Tonight we are having her Prawn and mango curry which I am fit to bursting about. One of the best things about all this is buying new storecupboard essentials, wok oil anyone?

I went to a marvellous party on New Year's Eve, it was at Teazey weazey Mark and Tim's. It was a ritzy affair. It was excellent for me as the other guests were called David, David, David and Tim! I am usually horrendous at remembering names which gets me in all kinds of bother but there would be no blushes as there was only a 50/50 chance of getting it wrong. Excellent odds.
Ofcourse I let myself down with the drink consumption but managed to see midnight and an excellent meal before retiring at 1am.

This year I have made a resolution to make every recipe in the Nigella Express cookbook. Tonight it's haddock with cannellini beans which is the very first one in the book. There are only 52 weeks in a year so I shall have to do the maths and find out my target number or I shall be in a kitchen filled with bubbling pans and whirring appliances as I try to cram them all in before 31st December.

Woke at four on Friday morning clutching my chest and alarmed to find that my left arm felt like a brick. NHS Direct put the willies up me and pointed me in the direction of my nearest accident and emergency service. Fearing imminent death the wife drove me there and then my day of horror began.....

I was seen immediately because 'chest pains' is like 'open sesame' or for that matter 'asylum please' in the world of the NHS. I had a needle rammed up my hand and blood taken by a slap dash doctor, an ECG and a chest x-ray. All proved ok and I would have been allowed to go home there and then but for me letting slip that I had a family history of dicky tickers. That was red rag to a bull and I was wheeled up to the cardiology ward.

You should have seen me, the shame of it. I was in a hospital gown, with trainers and socks on, protesting that 'really, there's no need to fuss' trying to pull the blanket over my legs that I had slovenly not shaved for a while.

When I reached the ward I asked if I could 'just nip to the loo' but was told that I would have to use a comode! I was rigged up to a heart monitor and lay there without any dignity and just a bag of satsumas for company.

In the space of the day I had six different women touching my boobs, which under normal circumstances could hold a certain appeal. They had to keeping lifting them so they could stick those little patches on me. In the end I was wired up like a bloody Christmas tree, flashing my knickers and not my lights.

In the end ofcourse, I was all ok and allowed to go home, my pains were put down to indigestion, no doubt with a big rubber munchausen stamp on my medical records. The shame of it.

It's Christmas Eve and it's so exciting, the presents are wrapped and the house is rammed with food and fancies, I also still believe in Father Christmas and the Virgin's birth and what's wrong with that? It's magic, it's wonderful, it's smashing.
What I don't like though is GMTV at Christmas, I hate it, I have to turn off. Every year they show ex pats on Bondi Beach saying 'hello' to their mums, that really annoys me. If GMTV was a Christmas decoration it would be tinsel - and the cheap kind.
Anyway, have yourselves a Merry little Christmas, make the yuletide gay and don't forget the life for lola sale begins on Boxing Day!

I have not been much of a chatty kathy lately, I'd like to say it's because I have been so busy with festive parties and ofcourse my charity work but it's not. Most of my time on-line these days is spent ordering Christmas presents, what did we do before Play.com? The Wife and I were in Windsor today and if it wasn't for the rolls of wrapping paper in Smiths and roast chestnuts being sold in the train station you'd never know the big day was a week away. Shopping was a breeze, gone are the days of twenty minute queues to the tills and elbows in faces these days present buying is a doddle.
Mind you, my best laid plans have gone squew whiff, I had planned to go out yesterday and finish the wife off (her presents, not murder) but I have fallen fowl of the dreaded cold bug and couldn't face it. I have been waking up in the middle of the night with snot on my face sounding like the elephant man. Not only that, I seem to have buggered my back at the gym. I'm necking sherry to ease the pain and at this rate I'll pile back the pounds that I left on the treadmill. A girl can't win.

Let's all pray for Liza

Went on a day trip to France on Sunday, oh my what fantastic fun. The wife and I went with Teazey weazey Mark and Tim. I love a day trip, they hold more fun for me than a holiday. I think it must stem from school trips to museums and brass rubbing centres. The joy of wearing your own clothes, bundling to get on the back of a coach and the smell of a banana in tupperware. Priceless.

It's all doom and gloom with the property market, boom and considerable bust. On my way to work this morning I passed a new development of luxury apartments (cheaply built flats with paper thin walls) and thought to myself as I looked at the marketing hoardings how they would have to change things as the recession looms like a 'funny cousin' at a family funeral. Around the building site they have erected aspirational pictures of young people enjoying a life of success after buying one of the apartments. A fella reads the paper with a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, he has his feet up, hair 'messy trendy' and a relaxed smile on his face. Another one shows a woman, thin and gorgeous about to press the plunger down on her coffee pot. I'll give her plunge, I'd like to see her face when she's plunged into debt with a mortgage twenty times her salary and the Avon catalogue lady knocking at her door! Let's see these pictures! Faces of horror and remorse! A letter box piled high with credit card statements, a cupboard that is bare! Hmmm.

I fell victim to the Asda Dom Perignon mania last night. I got a phone call from Teezy Weezy Mark alerting me that my local Asda's was selling the toff's champagne at a knock down price of thirty quid! I nearly dropped the phone in the casoulet I was knocking up.
Needless to say I bolted my dinner - spilling most on my top - and jumped into the jollopy and set out into a wet winter evening enroute to the nasty side of town.
Ofcourse when I got there it had all gone, the 'rollback' sign was there but the shelf was empty, I reckoned that the nasty Sharon Osbourne (she lives local) had been there and 'ad the lot. Well, if I had seen her I would have given her more than a slap on the backside.
I do love a Christmas bargain though, I have fond memories of the Morrisson's Verve Cliquot coup of a few years ago. It seems with each year they get better and better. Infact, like the first whiff of pine needles or the emotional stir of the Salvation Army band these limited offers speak more to me of Christmas than the little baby Jesus!

It's the Wife's birthday today, bless her. We can't do much to celebrate because it falls on a school night. We're going down to Bath on Sunday though to see the Christmas Market so that will be more than enough excitement for one week.
I do like a Christmas market, if you like sheds you are half way there because that's what they basically are, rows of little sheds selling stuff and nonsense.
I like a hot plastic cup of mulled wine which would strip wallpaper and I like walking around with overcooked pig in a roll, I also like kicking people on the back of the legs when they get in the way - oh I can't wait.
I am getting in the Christmas spirit at last and during lunch I checked the magazine rack in Tesco for the Radio Times but it aint out yet. My advent calendar is sat on my desk winking at me as I type, it's a chocolate one which I bought a week ago but I reckon the heat of the computer may have melted it. I'll open up on Monday to find something Bobby Sands may have left behind. Can't wait.

To Derbyshire at the weekend to stay in lovely Breaston. We got there by the power of SatNav and the skin of our teeth. We're new to this little invention and for the entire journey there it kept 'bonging'. The wife and I couldn't understand why it would emit this sound so we decided it was just to keep us awake, afterall 'tiredness kills'. It wasn't until we got to Mr Clive and Mr Drew's that they told us it was a warning that we were going over the speed limit! Red faces all round. Less to say we have now deactivated this feature.

Lola's going to see Morrissey, Lola's going to see Morrissey!

I caught a bus yesterday. It wasn't the sort of bus that I am used to getting on. It was a modern bus aimed at the disabled. It had a door that swished open towards me, not the old style that concertiners, it nearly had me over. Narrowly escaping being maimed by public transport I took tentative steps and approached the Polish bus driver.
I nearly put my back out having to bend down to pay for my ticket as his money tray was conveniently placed at knee level. I went to take a seat, I found one which had a sign of an old woman bent double with a suggestion that I should give it up if she wanted it back. It had a whiff of piss about it but as my journey was a short one I hoped it wouldn't penetrate.
I could see my stop approaching so I got up to work my way to the door whilst the bus was still moving - I know we are not supposed to but I never trust the ting of the bell - I began grabbing at the rails one by one to steady me, you can imagine my alarm when the rails began to give way! I was shocked and stunned, I could feel the toes of my fellow commuters curling as I was flung like a rag doll from one side of the bus to the other!

I was in that Second Life thing last night. It's a bit freaky deaky. I kept bumping into people because I couldn't get my Avatar to walk straight. It's very complicated and rather time consuming. I'm sure it's a boon to the agrophobic but it doesn't fly with me. It ended up crashing my computer, tonight it will be 'Add and Remove' for Second Life. I can't get myself involved in another one of these things, Facebook is already all consuming.
The gym was busy last night, people are desperate to slim into their party frocks for the festive season. I couldn't get near the floor exercise area, it was full of lithe bodies moving up and down. I decided to do my sit ups at home, I left them until bedtime which was a bit of a mistake as the Wife whacked me in the face with her belt as she was getting undressed, my tummy looks great it's my cheek that's bulging now!
I'm rather looking forward to January at the gym, I know it's going to be busy with New Year Resolutionaries but the good thing is they will be FAT and not the toned athletes that "tut" at my paltry five minutes on the treadmill.

And all that Yazz

I've been going through a bit of a midlife crisis, I'm 37 in a few weeks so I've been eyeing up open top sports cars in the Dinky toy catalogues, joining a gym, tapping my feet to Kylie Minogue's new record you know the stuff - oh it's been woeful. I'm not concerned about my career, thoughts that I should have hit the glass ceiling by now or my financial status, I'm just a bit dry mouthed being the wrong side of 30.

Out on a 'works do' tonight. God help me. I have trouble holding my drink (even in my hands) and one wonders what bombshell I might drop in a moment of drunken sincerity. This time next week I might be working my notice.
Not to drink would be out of the question. The Wife isn't coming, she's going to drop me off at the restaurant and then wait, like the firemen in Trumpton, for the alarm bell to ring to pick me up, but where will it be from? The Police Station or A&E.
I'm not normally keen on dining out in large groups, seating can be a minefield and I can't always hear what people are saying. These new pizza restaurants don't help, the flooring makes it easier to listen to a conversation four tables away than the person opposite. I know it's not trendy but nothing beats a nice bit of Axminster wool twist!

I had to walk to work this morning with a tennis racket. It's a long story so I'll skip to the end but I had to have it in its black case slung over my shoulder. My coat is green and a bit military (such is the fashion these days) so if you squinted I looked a little like Michael Ryan. I looked 'tooled up' so I rushed to work terrified incase I might be mistaken by a trigger happy copper a la John Charles de Mendez!

Wowzer! What a fabulous weekend. To Brighton on Friday night to see Pink Martini at The Dome, if you are not familiar with Pink Martini GET IT SORRRTTTTED as you've no idea what you're missing. The concert was great, PHENOMENAL.
On Saturday I managed to track a swimming costume down in the unlikeliest of places -ASDA's! It's very nice, has a bit of support for girls that are big on top and - like most things sold in ASDA's - has a nice little pocket for your benefit books.
In the afternoon we went along the coast to Shoreham where our two pals Michelle and Sarah live. It's a rinky dink of a place, the Wife and I loved it, we were treated to a cream tea, a brisk walk along the front and we intend to return!

Filth! I'm becoming a bit of a prude, the Wife says it's because I'm getting old but I don't think so. They are advertising an exhibition called Erotica on a bus shelter close by to where I live, I think it's filth! I've no truck with anyone who wants to truss themselves up like a turkey or leap off wardrobes dressed in scuba gear, as far as I am concerned what folk get up to in the confines of their own bedrooms is entirely up to them but when it spills out onto the pavement - that's when my alarm bells ring!
What does the mother say to the small child that asks "mother what does kinky mean?" I know I'd be struck dumb. No, no, no keep things like that firmly under wraps, preferably in pvc or rubber.

Last night I went to the gym for the first time and merciful Jesus I nearly died. I don't know how I got home, I just remember 'coming to' in the bath at 7.30pm shocked and stunned with a face like a beetroot.
I tried to cheer myself up with telly. Being Monday night I expected to see a big old beast grazing on BBC2 but was devastated to see a couple of Stags on Autumn Watch! Where's Nigella gone!? Where was the warning? Why BBC, why!?!

To Watford this weekend to buy a swimming costume for my new fitness regime. The shopping mall is aptly named "The harlequin centre" because the place is an absolute farce. To skip to the chase you can't buy a swimming costume in November. You should have heard the excuses "err, no we're out of stock" "nah" and my favourite (in a sports shop) "we don't sell them" Infact most of the sport shops the Wife and I went into didn't sell a great deal to do with sport, infact it was abundantly clear that the sportswear that they did sell would be destined for the sofa and not the rowing machine.
So I'm on a bit of a sticky wicket, no new swimming costume. It's a silly name really, it's not like a fancy dress costume although wouldn't that be good, people doing the breaststroke dressed as nuns, clowns, cowboys and pirates.

Huge excitement chez Lola this morning. I opened up the newspaper to see Liza Minnelli staring up at me! She's going on tour! I shrieked to the Wife upstairs in a pitch HIGHER than nasty Heather Mills soon to be ex Mcartney and ten minutes later we were two hundred quid lighter and slap bang in centre stalls. I am SO excited I think I'm losing my mind.
The Wife and I nearly came to blows though, in my frenzy to get good seats I nearly ripped her arm off to get to the computer mouse, but I played the Barbra Streisand card* by way of an apology.

*In June we paid an eye watering amount of money for Barbra tickets because that - along with swimming with dolphins and seeing Naples - was the wife's life long dream.

I'm back on bloody Facebook, I got fed up with it a few months ago and deactivated but the bug's got me again. I'm turning down requests to throw sheep and plant flowers in people's gardens, I can't be having with that. Infact, I wish they'd invent a Facebook Lite for people like me who just want to 'wash and go' The Wife still views it with disdain and she's right to.
One thing I view with disdain is Eastenders. The language is terrible, last night I heard said "she's a cow", "bloody door" and a woman was slapped in the face. This was all before 8.30pm. I ask you. The BBC is sailing on a sea of filth and should hang its head in shame. I thank the lord that I was never exposed to the programme as a child, what sort of adults will be produced if they're allowed to watch it before bedtime? The channel should be renamed ASBO 1 not BBC 1!

To Diane and Mick's on Saturday night for an amazing meal with John, Teresa, Joe and Lisa. I don't know if you are aware but there is a slight age difference between the Wife and I, not a huge one, nothing disturbing, anyway, as a consequence I was the youngest one at the table but my word you wouldn't have known it. They don't half know how to knock it back, I'm a bit of a party animal myself but I'm a mere hamster compared to them. We didn't get home until 3! If it wasn't for the clocks going back it would have been later!
We had a fantastic time and both the wife and I were very moved with the trouble they had gone to....I'm welling up now....

Chunky Munky

The Wife and I are to join the gym. As my ship of life sails toward the end of summer I can already smell the autumn leaves and feel my ever increasing waistline, so there's nothing for it but the rowing machine.
I've been looking at middle aged women recently to see how some have let themselves go, it's an easy bank to fall down and a hard one to scramble back from. I fear the bingo wing, I want a flat pack stomach, tennis elbow and athletes foot!
We're off to sign on the dotted line tonight and then get induced, it's an expensive old business, not only have we to pay for membership there's the clothing to buy, I need a sports bra, swimming costume, trainers and P.E Knickers - I'll be up all night sewing my name into them all!

Took the bus this morning to work, the driver was eastern european which seems to be the norm these days only this one looked and sounded just like Count Von Count from Sesame Street, it was a little sinister.
Being driven around town by a Vampire during daylight hours is so so but I should imagine for those travelling on the night bus it must be a little disarming, especially when those doors hiss shut.
Oh well I got from A to B without fuss so, as the Chinese have cornered the fish and chip market, the Transylvanians can have the buses.

Forever England

The Wife and I are home now but God knows how. Our brief sojourn in Paris was marred by striking communist Metro drivers which threw a veritable spanner in the works. You can see why they didn't get the Olympics.
Getting to the airport on Friday - a journey which should have taken at the most sixty minutes - took us four hours. They were laying on a bus service to Charles De Gaulle airport from the centre of the city which as you can imagine was heavily subscribed. Numerous nationalities queued around the block and my God the stereotypes came through. As Noel Coward once said "Why do the wrong people travel, travel, travel and the right people stay at home?" Why is it so hard for foreigners to grasp the concept that a queue has a beginning at one end and an ending at the other? We eventually got on and stood up front with the driver. To be honest it all had a sense of evacuation about it and one couldn't help feeling a bit World War 2, One doesn't want to spell it out but it did all have a smack of Anne Frank about it.

This is the Mrs and I post civil partnership ceremony feeling rather pleased with ourselves! We were both very overwhelmed by the whole occasion and the Mrs got quite choked up during the ceremony - and who wouldn't at the prospect of marrying me! - but I too was rather moved and felt my bottom lip quiver which was a sensation that I hadn't felt since my favourite racing pigeon failed to return from Newport Pagnell.
Mr Drew and Mr Clive were sensational best men who pulled out all the stops for us. When we arrived at the registry office we found them car boot up dispensing gin and tonics which were very welcome indeed. I don't think I could have got through it without a slug of Bombay coursing through my system. They also took the official photos throughout the day and night which, after several bottles of champagne, will possibly require a delicate airbrush. They are auctioning them off to the highest bidder which is why we have just got this one at the moment. You'll have to wait until the next edition of Okey Dokey magazine or Woodturners Monthly depending how they get on.
We knocked it back all day and, when Mark and Tim joined us in the evening, we knocked it back all night and I was pleased as punch. I finished the night walking barefoot through Eton - how many girls can say that? Today my toes look like the Somme so I wont be mincing down the Champs-Élysées with a smile on my face tomorrow. I have in my head though some lovely memories which I shall treasure forever and enormous gratitude to Mr Clive, Mr Drew, Mark and Tim and ofcourse the Mrs for making yesterday so special.
Now it's off to Paris for a week with the French who we've just beaten at Rugby......wish me luck.

Getting married tomorrow, the Ladyfriend is going to make me an honest woman so no more porky pies and loose women, oooerr. We're going off to Paris for our honeymoon, I'm very excited, we're going to go on the Amelie tour and see places from the film. Apparently the Café des deux Moulins serves a creme brulee called "Amelie" I was thinking about this and wondering if the Ritz hotel have named a pudding after Lady Di - perhaps an apple turnover. Anyhow, as from tomorrow the "Ladyfriend" will become the "Mrs" all good willing and if the devil doesn't have his way!

Whoops. Invited a few friends for a candle-lit supper at my mother's house on Saturday night whilst we are looking after the place. How was I to know they'd put it on MySpace? I think we picked up the last empty bottle of beer at 9.45pm last night. Shocking behaviour for the middle aged, I saw things on saturday night that would have made my hair curl if I had not recently had it cut into a fashionable bob.
I am busy now trying to replace the broken furniture on ebay, mum gets back on Thursday, hope she's in a good mood.

The Ladyfriend and I have been house sitting whilst my mum suns herself in Cyprus, this is the third year that we have done it and I always enjoy riffling through her cupboards and using her lotions and potions, it does a girl good to get her dose of Sodium laureth sulfate from other sources once in a while.
It means that I use the car to get to work, I can not stand morning radio dj's (apart from Terry Wogan ofcourse who is wonderful) so I made myself a tape of Abba hits to play. Trouble is the tape player in the car is a bit odd and for some reason the background of a song comes to the fore, so instead of the crisp voices of Anna and Frida I get Bjorn and Benny singing "sup-pa-pa troup-pa-pa" I don't mind so much, I turn it up loud and sing like a banshee.
I'm not keen on the route to work though as I have a few roundabouts to traverse and a 12% hill to descend. The hill makes my ears go funny and leaves me a bit mutton for a few hours in the morning.

Is it just me or are you sick of Richard Hammond?

Disaster strikes with the wedding plans! The Ladyfriend and I went to pick up our rings on Saturday that we had ordered three weeks ago. The Ladyfriend's is great and I have had to hide it in a secret place to stop her from trying it on.
Mine however was a thing of horror. It was enormous! My fingers are short and stubby like that of a cockney piano player's and my size is 'R' so the ring which had looked nice Lina Zavaroni size looked like a bloody knuckle duster when sized up! I felt like a chav dragging that thing around so it's had to go back to the grindstone.

The new series of Kath and Kim has begun in Australia. I love it and the best news ever is that Sharon's sister visits from England in this Sunday's episode and she's being played by Matt Lucas (the funny one from Little Britain). It will be a long time till it comes to my telly so I shall be You Tubing in the hope that it might be on.
If you have never seen it then you're missing out as it's unyoooooooooosual. click here to see their website

The Ladyfriend and I have been lapping up Nigella Lawson's new series which knocks Jamie and Hugh into a cocked chef's hat. She's fab but filthy.
On Monday she wanted her chops "juicy, juicy, juicy" whiched raised a few eyebrows on our sofa. Her mushrooms were "bosky" and her rosemary was "Resiny" - what school did she go to for Christ's sake and in what century?
I want the DVD and book for Christmas.

Hang double glazing, hang a new kitchen, hang fitted carpets we're buying a boat. The Ladyfriend and I had the best time ever on the Thames on Saturday thanks to Diane and Mick. We were supping on large frothy coffees in one of those multinational coffee chainstores when we got the call. We were out of the door and at the dock before you could say 'shiver my timbers'. I now have a copy of 'boat mart magazine' which I shall thumb with my scotch and cigar tonight.

Our whole weekend has been Thames based in actual fact. We were guests of Mark and Tim on Saturday night in Chigwell. We had a marvellous candle lit supper and then Sunday seeing the sights (not Chigwell's although I'm sure there are some). We went to Columbia Road flower market and then on to Spittalfield's, all in the shadow of the gherkin. We then went for lunch at The Captain Kidd Pub in Wapping which was wonderful, it is slap bang on the river Thames with phenomenal views. We've been very lucky girls indeed.

I won buggerall, I matched two numbers and it wasn't number 24. The next time I see her I shall insert my club card in a dark place that she'll never reach.

Stay away from the light Carol Anne

Weird. Just been to Tesco and the girl on the till was a little bit 'odd'. She started to giggle and said "I heard that Nanna!" I looked around, there was no one there. Thinking she could 'see dead people' I had a slight shivver but carried on packing.
I came to pay and she shrieked "it's £24.24! You couldn't have done that if you tried, you should do the lottery and make sure there is a number 24 in it!"
I ran like a bastard to the lottery kiosk. I've got a ticket for tonights draw in my draws. I thought it was just thick poor people who do the lotto but from what I can tell you need a degree just to work out how to buy a ticket. I had to ask. There are three or four different slips of paper with whizzes and bangs all over them. It aint easy. Fingers crossed for tonight, eyes down and hopefully there will be two happy fat ladies!

The Ladyfriend and I were apoplectic when we saw the latest scheme to fuel teenage pregnancy. "Pregnant women to be offered £120 'good food' grants" Is it just me? Not only do they get housing, social security, child benefit and a one off £200 when the child is born (to go towards university - yeah right) they are now going to get £120 so they can eat properly.
How misguided. The only difference it will make will be the choice between Super Kings and Benson and Hedges. Unbelievable.
The streets will be full of thirteen year old girls with distended bellies listening to shiny new iPods.
The best thing the government could do would be to use this obviously spare money and give it to the police because it will be them who will have to deal with all the little bastards.

Please sir, can I have some more

I absolutely LOVE this. It's the Harvey Nic's Foodmarket awards You Tube movie and it's brilliant. It's bang on the nail illustrating how the contents of the dinner plate has morphed into a lifestyle statement.
Did you see Nigella's new cookery show on Monday? She's a dirty old bird but the Ladyfriend and I love her. She did this thing with squid using a product called 'old bay seasoning' I googled it, it's now sold out, it's now selling on ebay.
You can bet your life it will sit in the cupboards of the lucky few who got their hands on it unopened for years.
I borrowed a pasta making machine from my handsome brother a few months ago, I've bought the correct flour, I've got the recipe, do you think I've made any? nah.

Kate Bush this morning - on the way to work - and I was so chilled out I felt like a mini milk, that was until I saw the graffiti. Beneath the motorway flyover some idiot called "Bong" had plastered his/her name all over the concrete. It looked rather comical in a way with "Bong, bong, bong" like something out of winnie the pooh, only it wasn't, it was a destructive youth who quite possibly is also responsible for smashing the glass at the bus stop. Too many bad apples rotting the barrel.
I've always had a lifelong dislike of the young, I try to not to make eye contact, I never entertain the idea of conversation with anyone between the ages of 8 to 18.
I don't like 12 year old girls in make-up or 12 year old boys spitting. Oooh it makes me shudder. So my walk to work this morning was marred by the thought of it being marched upon last night by spray paint wielding teenagers. It had an atmosphere of loss like a field of battle. Not nice.

I'm off the sauce again. Lola's packed it on. I walked to work this morning listening to an mp3 player looking like an obese Ipod advert, thighs chaffing together to the music.
It's six weeks to go before my 'big day' and at this rate it's going to be a big fat gay wedding. I might have to suggest the wide angle lens.
I made a stew last night (surprisingly low in fat) but left it in the oven and forgot about it, I could have burned the house down. I became ingrossed in a thought provoking documentary on BBC4 (it happens) and my stew set like a cake after 5 hours on medium. Now I'm going to have to pour a bottle of valpolicella in just to loosen it all up.

I know this is going to sound odd but I'm bursting with pride because my niece Amy wanted ME to take her to the loo. Out of all the people in the room it was me who she tugged by the hand! She's two years old by the way, just incase anyone who is new to Lola might be recoiling in horror at the thought of a grown woman needing assistance in the lavvy. Ah, but it were grand.
Talking of grown women needing assistance, on tv this morning a lady had come down from the north to put flowers on the gates of Kensington Palace for "Diyanna" She was wearing a union jack t-shirt, she was bossed eyed and looked into the camera and told us how she came down every year to mark the death of the people's princess because she felt an affinity with her.
My mouth was agape. I don't think it's a good thing to perpetuate all this nonsense it just over excites these vulnerable people. I suppose Social Services could cast a net today and have several cases solved and in the bag by Christmas but I certainly wouldn't want to be on the Circle Line today.
I was never a fan of Di and never understood all the crying on the streets and signing books of condolence, I bat for Team Charles and don't mind who knows it. I watched the funeral and was moved by the John Taverner music, when the Ladyfriend and I go to Paris in October we might go on the Lady Di Pont d'Alma coach tour (Can you imagine the commentary?!) but I won't subscribe to all this morbid grief for someone I don't know. Tonight I shall munch on a Duchy Original sausage and switch the telly off to escape the coverage.

Chicago, Chicago that toddling town

Just had word from America that my favourite American Carol Hatfield has pulled off a bit of a coup. Not only did she go to Martyr’s Pub in Chicago to see Eddi Reader, she went backstage and met her! Carol is the jammy dodger on the left by the way.
I've decided that I would not want to meet Eddi Reader in case she does not live up to my expectations, she swears or drops litter, that sort of thing. Same goes for Morrissey and Liza with a Z. I love the people too much that I don't want to see the wizard behind the curtain.

Spot the difference

These are me two new nephews, aint they dolly diamonds? All squidged up. One day they will buy me cheap perfume for Christmas, help me get out of my chair at weddings, avoid my prickly kisses and hover around my purse like a dog waiting for scraps at the table. They'll one day say "How much did you get out of the old girl?" and "Let's go and see Aunty Lola" when their mum and dad have said "No".....Oh it brings a tear to the eye.

Quelle horreur!

Found out today that a slip of my fingers caused an email to be sent that could have had devastating effects. Instead of typing one word I typed another which changed the message from laughter to tears. Dreadful. Thankfully all is not lost but it could have been.
Email and text messages, hideous really. It's no substitute for the human voice. It's all down to individual interpretation. I have lost count of the times that the ladyfriend and I have looked puzzled at our mobile phones at a recently received missive and got the wrong end of the stick. It's the old eats shoots and leaves thing 'aint it?

Double Bubble!

Just heard the best news - I'm now Auntie to twin boys! How fantastic is that!!?!! It's amazing, but what a dismal summer to be born into. As I look out of the window now I can see a tree heavy with conkers and rusty coloured leaves. My holiday tan has faded and the heating is on. Oh well.
It's the rounders match tonight and as per usual people who were full of enthusiasm have dropped out, never mind, I'm packing a sports bra so I'll hit it for six in great comfort.

I was in a pub yesterday with some 'young' people. When I say young they were early twenties, they were complaining that they were overweight and pinching the flab on their tummies - it looked like puppy fat to me. One girl was talking about the Joker in Batman, I said he used to scare me to death and she said "what Jack Nicholson?.......oh you mean the tv programme" I shook my head and looked at the floor.
Anyway, in a last ditch attempt to 'get with the programme' I've dipped my toe back into the hit parade and have bought an album by some whipper snapper called Amy Macdonald and I have to say I think it's brilliant. I can't make out every word but it's a start.
Atleast I'm more on the ball than the ladyfriend's mum, the other night they had Elvis on tv (as it's the 30th anniversary of his death) she said "that chap never seems to alter". How we laughed. When we explained he was dead she seemed quite shocked. It's terrible to hear the news that the King is dead once let alone twice in one lifetime.

I was near close moved to tears this morning. There was bugger all worth watching on the food channels on Sky so I kept punching the button until I hit the Performance Channel and a 1972 concert of Marlene Dietrich. It was phenomenal. Jaw dropping.
She seemed to be singing out of the side of her mouth - I don't know if she'd had a stroke by then, she was a little uneasy on her heels - but it was an amazing performance. "Lil Marlene" was the one that choked me up. I've added the DVD to my wish list.

To start with I must just say I don't 'do' Eastenders. I used to watch it as a youth around the era when Aaarffa stole the Christmas club money and that dreadful time Ali lost the cafe on the turn of a card but its current incarnation is lost on me. So its with a great deal of annoyance that lifesize hoardings of the Mitchell sisters, Ronnie and Roxy, are thrust in my face whenever I drive by a bus shelter.
A lot of imagination with the names there, they clearly conjur up a world of gangland crime in the 60's - I wonder if Babs Windsor approves what with her affiliation.
Anyway, what gets my goat about Eastenders is the appalling acting. It's just Soooooooooo stage school. The over the top performances, the shouting, the looking in the distance when they hark back to a memory of when the old king died, oh it's just terrible and that's just the kids. And the Dick Van Dyke cockney accents - oh don't get me started.
So in walk these two women, chavved up to the eyeballs - I can smell the Coleen X from here (By the way, is it just me or is that girl's perfume supposed to be pronounced Kleenex?) - with their 'gawd love a duck' acting and high volume shrieking and I just despair. Apparently they have been brought in to 'save' Eastenders. Save it from what? I think a nice pair of concrete boots and the River Thames is in order.

My weekend began under the stars and ended under the stars. On Friday the Ladyfriend and I dined al fresco in Mick and Diane's garden. They had taken advantage of the summer washout by buying an amazing bar-b-q in the sales. It's called The Grand Canyon and as you can imagine by the name it's a formidable size. I'm afraid that I got a bit 'tight' and was hard pushed to put one foot infront of another on the way home. I checked on saturday and hadn't disgraced myself anymore than usual. A good time had by all.
Last night I was peering up at the night sky for the much promised meteor shower which was very much a damp squib. I didn't see one. We were told to look east but my little compass (which came out of a christmas cracker) was behaving eratically and so we were running from one side of the house to another in a fruitless search for the falling stars!
The Ladyfriend pulled the curtains and buggered off to bed sending - what she calls crap but I call my treasures (bits of wood, pebbles, old silver spoons etc) - crashing from the window sill to the ground. It's a bit creepy staring out into the garden at that time of night. You have to have the lights in the room turned off too and I didn't want to do it on my own so I packed it in too.

DIB DIB DHSS

I absolutely love this (From the Daily Mail)

They came here from all corners of the globe to celebrate 100 years of Scouting.

But it seems some of the youngsters at the World Scout Jamboree were prepared for more than just a fortnight of fun.

As thousands from 162 nations enjoyed the activities at Hylands Park in Chelmsford, Essex, 13 of their brethren disappeared.

Nine Scouts from Bangladesh and Uganda never arrived at the campsite, while four from Sri Lanka and Nigeria vanished during the 12-day event.

Police say there are no suspicious circumstances and believe the youngsters may be planning to stay in Britain illegally.

Can't wait for the 2012 Olympics.

I've posted my Amsterdam pictures click here As I said, they aint no great shakes but you may as well see what ya been missing. I've also uploaded a video to my You Tube channel click here of some Amsterdam buskers which are worth a look. Buskers these days are so much more sophisticated than they used to be. Gone are the days of blind accordian players* in pissy smelling underpasses shoppers are used to Philarmonic Orchestras in shopping malls.

*When I was a youth I would take the bus to Slough for shopping and there was always a blind accordian player there. He did a good trade but he gave me the willies as I was never quite sure if he was blind or not. He's since moved on to Henley and fingers his miniature organ outside Waitrose.

The new Jamie Oliver series was on last night and I must say the whole family enjoyed it. Even the Ladyfriend's mum was enthralled and put down her wordsearch book when he came on.
By and large I loved it and predict this year's new garden 'must have' will be a pizza oven. I want one already, the neighbours will just love the smell of burnt focaccia ruining their washing.
We also gave the gardener ten out of ten who, like most of Jamie O's friends, will end up with his own show. Ah, I'm only jealous.

I was going through my photos of Amsterdam to put on the site last night and I'm having trouble choosing between them. Not because there are so many great pictures but because there are so few! Half of them are out of focus! Damn that Amstel beer.
Never mind, there are only so many picture of drag queens that one person can have in 'my documents'.
I'm in training at the moment. At work there's a rounders game in the offing and I'm not in match winning shape. Things could get messy. I've not played rounders since school but I have fond memories of it. I'm team captain with enormous responsibility on my shoulders...time to get a sports bra.

Wow what a weekend. Amazing. Amazing Amsterdam. It started badly, we were on the Sleazy Jet flight from hell full of junkies and stag weekenders (whatever happened to stag nights?) now, I'm no snob - well actually yes I am - but these people were beyond chav, it was 3pm and they were pissed and they were cheering and jeering whilst the trolley dolleys were trying to demonstrate the safety instructions. It makes me shudder.
But Amsterdam Pride was just the best thing ever and I have already started my penny jar to fund next year's. I too was pissed at 3pm on the Saturday, singing and dancing along with a Shirley Bassey lookie likey who was as good as the real thing (well, I thought so at the time). She sang all the hits perched on the end of a canal boat it was magic. We were having such a good time - the ladyfriend and I - that we ended up on Belgian telly. It's funny how you know all the words when you're tiddly but I couldn't sing a whole verse of "This is my life" now if you held a gun to my head.

My favourite cook on the telly at the moment is Tamasin Day-Lewis she's just like sooooooooo posh but 'dangerous' if you know what I mean? There's something about her that makes me think 'rehab'. Her hair looks as though it hasn't been cut since she left finishing school and she has this chubby woman friend called George. Her food is wonderful though. She aint no barefoot more Barberfoot but I'm strangely drawn none the less.
The Ladyfriend and I are off to Amsterdam tomorrow for Pride, can't wait. We are staying right in the heart of the street party bit so we are quite excited. Photos on Monday. Ciao.

What on earth has happened to Jamie Oliver? I saw his enormous face staring down at me from the magazine stand this morning, he looked like Bette Davis as Baby Jane Hudson. What a bloater! My Oliver swingometer has swung his way to the good in recent years what with his fish pie recipe and his jars of pesto being sublime but it's certainly wavering now. Take a look at the front of the Radio Times and you'll see what I mean. Poor old Jules, waking up to that every morning. A fat tongue is one thing but a ballooning face is certainly another.

I've been looking at the amount of rubbish that I am producing and have to say that the bulk of it isn't absolutely all my fault. In an age when tossing a jam jar into a bin is tantamount to murder and not recycling newspapers carries a life sentance it's very hard to move these days without the risk of ending up on crimewatch. Every day I seem to attract my own body weight in refuse. If it doesn't come home in my shopping it is pushed through my door, leaves my body in a different form than it came in or is produced just by cleaning myself. I'm afraid the climate will just have to change without me as I'm sick of spinning the plates. I've reams of paper waiting for shredding and then what do I do with it? Give it to a hamster!
The ladyfriend and I had to visit the municipal dump at the weekend which to me is a bit like visiting people you're not all that keen on - you don't look forward to it but you enjoy it when you get there.
It's a very nice dump, they run a tight ship with different sections for this, that and the other. In a corner they have this Aladdin's cave of unwanted treasures which they have hoiked out of the skips. I've often drooled over these items. They have hundreds of golf clubs, chairs, tables, garden gnomes and the like. They also have a vast collection of skis which just goes to show how well the economy is doing.
This weekend they had a massive chandelier which must have come from a huge house - a little 70's in styling - but a thing of beauty all the same. The men had suspended it and it sparkled as it shook gently in the wind. It certainly injected a bit of much needed glamour as we tossed the garden clippings away.

tuppence a bag

I'm not having much luck with the birds. They are a fickle bunch. Before I went on holiday I was being eaten out of house and home. I had more than two in a bush I had a veritable Quality Street tin of varieties, finches, sparrows, crows, tits, robins but two weeks away and I've a lawn fall of peanuts going begging.
I know what's happened, during my break in the sun they've f*cked off to the neighbours garden, I've seen his nutbags swinging from the vantage point of my bedroom window and there's nothing I can do about it.
The pheasants have been loyal god love 'em, they've stuck by me a fact that I shall remember come the glorious 12th.

I'm like sooooooo loving YouTube, I was on it for hours last night. They've got videos of Barbra Streisand, Liza with a Z and Judy Garland! Fantastic. I've stuck a little movie of Verona up if you want to click here and see it, it's no great shakes but it's a little soupcon of my holiday. I have also stuck up my photos atlast click here.
I must apologise for not being much of a chatty cathy lately, I've lost it a bit since we got back. I'm out of the loop when it comes to social commentary and very rarely catch the news. I have been confining myself to the kitchen this week and have also been drinking heavily, the only enthusiasm I can muster is when I knock the wife around a bit....

There should be a decompression chamber for when people come home from their holidays, I feel ready to fall asleep at the drop of a hat. I don't know if it's coming home to all this water but my little battery light is flashing red for danger. Anyhow, I'm cooking risotto tonight - a little taste of Italy - a reminder which I am hoping might lift me spirits.
Lake Garda was great, the hotel though became known as "Eagles Nest" to the Ladyfriend and I as there was such a high proportion of Germans staying there. They're funny buggers, they know how to occupy a beach, every morning I would awake gripped with fear that there would be no sun beds left. We would have to wade our way through their terry towelling which had been placed neatly at 4am and try and find ourselves a place without the whiff of sausage.
There were also rather a lot of pale Oirish children which would stay for a few days and then go off (I expect they were on their way to Rome to see their new Pope)they would run up and down on the way to use the water slide and I'm not kidding at one point I thought I was in a scene from Angela's bloody Ashes.
We left the compound often though, and took in as much of the Italian atmosphere that we could (before we went back to the hotel and our Eva Braun suite) we took a trip to Verona, the Dolomite Mountains and took boat trips around the lake. When we dined out the food was like a religious experience, I've never eaten pasta like it. The little towns were stunning, the buildings were jaw dropping and fig trees grew out of cracks in the pavement like weeds. Highly recommended.

The Ladyfriend and I are home from our holidays and what a swell time we've had. I'll write more for you tomorrow as I'm running a wee bit behind what with coming home on Saturday and seeing Ms Streisand last night, so enjoy this scene of Verona in the meantime.

but i do what i do toodeloo

I don't BELEEEEEEVVVEEEE IT! Liza with a Z is on the road and she aint doing London! I'd be happy to travel as far north as Leamington Spa but the great lady aint coming anywhere near UK airspace! What a disaster.
The ladyfriend and I are off to Italy tomorrow for two weeks so it's some consolation but the ciabatta will stick in me throat knowing that I'm going to miss out on the greatest show singer of all time - I mean WHAT a gene pool!

I've trouble with the feet. They've gone all hard and gnarly. I look like I've been walking barefoot in the bush with Jenny Agutter, it's not nice. So last night I sat watching the telly with my feet in a washing up bowl with all kinds of surfactants swilling about to get them super soft, I even bought a cream with horse piss in it (it says Urea on the tube so I'm hoping it's from Black Beauty and not an African gentleman piddling in a bucket on the minimum wage.)
I'm hoping they'll bounce back, my feet were once a source of great pride to me but, like many aspects of my body, have run to seed with neglect.

People have been harping on about Tony Blair's legacy and I reckon the thing I will remember him for the most is not curing ricketts, the abolishion of clause 28 or creating the homogonised high street but the law that was passed yesterday - The ban on smoking in public places! I've lost count of the times when a 'friend' has said "do you mind if I smoke?" and I've hated every sodding second of it and sitting with a smile on my face when I'd prefer to be ramming an ashtray between someone's puckered lips. It's great news indeed. Clean air. Now the only peasouper you'll see in a restaurant will be the eat with a spoon kind.

I've got trench foot. The Ladyfriend and I went to Louise and Jamie's wedding on Saturday - please click here for pictures - and it rained, heavily. I've never seen rain like it, it fell in Biblical proportions. It didn't spoil a thing mind you. Infact, I've never been to a better wedding. It felt like Carry On up the Khyber as we sat dining in a marquee whilst outside merry hell was let loose. It was thunder and lightening but it wasn't very frightening. It was British stiff upper lip stuff. What made it all the more poignant was that the marquee was erected on a cricket pitch with the lavvies in the pavillion. Between courses I had to answer the call of nature which meant me, a brolly, with my chin up walking barefoot across silly point, you can't get anything more English than that.
It was a bit of a late night - the skin was set like cement on the top of the Ovaltine - so I'll wind up now but if you want to see a bit of wedding dancing click here

Vic just a Minute get in touch, I've lost your email!

On my lunch time walk to Tesco I stepped on something. It made me skid slightly and my immediate thought was that I had happened upon some dogs mess and I would spend the best part of this week trying to be rid of its odour. I couldn't look down and kept on walking, if I had examined my sole it would have been obvious to passing traffic that I had trodden in dog muck and I couldn't have that.
I carried on walking scrapping my right foot slightly. I kept thinking though that it couldn't have been dog muck as the texture wasn't quite right, I decided that it was a mouse, frog or baby bird which in a way was worse.
On my way back from the supermarket I retraced my steps half not wanting to see the horror that awaited me but determined to put my mind to rest. I held my breath at the point of insertion and saw a big old soggy piece of ginger. How odd and how sad that someone's tea had been ruined.

It was the Ladyfriend's mother's birthday on wednesday and as she is advanced in years the only place to take the old girl was the Harvester restaurant. They serve simple fayre there and she likes to suck on Fish and Chips - everything else is too hard. As a special treat we decided to take the car out to Windsor and go to the Virginia Water branch, this was a bad idea, it was packed to the rafters. We don't like waiting so we went back to a Toby Carvery which we passed enroute.
From the outside it looked menacing, CCTV cameras adorned every corner of the building but we were starving so we went in.
Whilst we were digesting God only knows how many strains of growth hormones I watched through the window at a car that had pulled up. A group of boys got out. I sneered at them (I tend to do this with the young a lot these days) but as they came nearer I realised that they were the group Eton Road who failed to win last year's X Factor.
They looked ever so tired and I daresay they had just come back from perfoming in a dive of a gay club in Magaluf. One of them came in and spoke to the waitress. I can't be sure, but I think they asked for a secluded area so that they would not be ambushed by fans. This made me laugh. We left at this point so we will never know if they put on an impromptu concert or not. Bless 'em, this time next year one of them will probably be working there.

I've been dabbling with Facebook - I've been slipping off the cultural radar just lately so I thought I'd take the plunge and see what all the fuss is about. I've got myself a profile now and have a few friends already. You can ask people to be your pal, I've approached Morrissey but I'm not holding out too much hope there, he seems a closed book.

Spend Spend Spend

The flat's sold, the money's in the bank and so the ladyfriend and I set off to a monstrous shopping mall yesterday to spend, spend, spend. Our plan was an orgy of consumption, to return home with hands slashed to ribbons by the weight of shopping bag handles, ears ringing with the sound of the tills and hair all static like having tried on too many man made fibres......but no, we were hard pushed to shell out £50.
We were in a position to let loose the gross national product of a small african country but the biggest purchase we made all day was the parking ticket. This won't do, this won't do at all.
We ended up on the NEXT website when we got home and ordered a few slacks from there, it wasn't quite as much fun but it gave us a sense of fullness. The catalogue is a big bugger, it came at the weekend. I love big post. I get an enormous thrill from large parcels, it is indeed one of my favourite things. So you can imagine my fury when the ladyfriend's mum - who has old timer's - thought it was hers and opened it! I was beside myself.

I am fortunate enough to be able to walk to work and in the mornings I pass by several mums and their kids on the way to school. It's great in itself that they do not clog the roads but these are the sort of mums who don't run a car if you know what I mean? Well, if I have to spell it out they are pikey types, single mothers, chavs whatever the vernacular is. Their little convoys of children of all nationalities rumble along with a peppering of blue language but this is not my problem, what I find the most offensive is the fabric softener.
I have noticed that people who smoke heavily think that a couple of generous cupfulls of conditioner in their wash will mask the fact that their house smells like a packet of streaky bacon. This is all well and good if you can afford the good stuff but the young mums I pass can only run to blue stripe. It's a good five minutes before it clears, they are mere spots on the horizon and cheap jasmine florabunda still clings to the air.

This weekend the Ladyfriend and I hired a ford transit van to move our stuff out of the flat in Eastbourne. I must say we made a good couple of truckers. It was fantastic. At first I was more than a little apprehensive when I saw the size of the beast having never driven an estate car let alone a bloody great van but after a few minutes I was in love. It's a completely different motoring experience, you can see for miles, over the tops of hedgerows and into other cars to ooogle the crumpet, magic.
Four days to go and our seaside retreat will be ours no more - along with the associated bills and stress. It's been fun helping to inflate property prices so the locals can not afford them and enlarge our carbon footprint on the M25 but I will be glad to see the back of it.

I've have decided to dislike a man at work solely because when he stirs his tea he noisily stirs the inside of the mug and not the liquid. I hate that, it's finger nails down a black board to me. A few noises get on my nerves. I can't stand wine being opened and then pored on tv programmes - especially soap operas - the glug, glug, glug as it goes into a glass sends me reeling.
I used to hate the introduction to John Craven's Newsround I can remember quite clearly diving to the floor with two cushions over my ears, I can recall the smell of the carpet even now. That music was manic, torture and then he'd coming on with a serious expression peddling dumbed down news. I like John Craven now though, I do like an episode of Country File of a Sunday, I believe he's found a niche there I reckon he's best kept away from kiddies.

I've just popped in to a gym which is doing a 14 day free trial, I thought I'd express an interest as one needs to 'get fizzical' if I am to lose the muffin top.
It was horrible, I was shown around by a grubby little man who didn't look like he used the equipment he was trying to peddle. A skinny young woman clad in a tracksuit hung in the shadows examining her nails. I think she was the beautician although she looked like she would be more at home pushing a pram along Margate pier than amongst the lotions and potions - she had peculiar shaped eye brows with a constant look of either surprise or the effect of a nuclear blast.
The bloke was showing me the different payment options and as he babbled on I daydreamed to myself thinking "I'm not going for any of it mate" and "I'll just scarper" when he asked me which one I thought I'd go for! I hadn't listened to a word. In the end I'm booked in for one of these inductions - it was that or I'd still be in there now.

Never mix, never worry!

The ladyfriend brought poison into the house last night, she had a four pack of lager - she may as well have brought home a loaded gun. I've been tea total now for over a month and whilst I may not have the physique of a young Debora Kerr I have nipped in a little at the waist. I blame my bulge on the booze. We are off on holiday in six weeks so time is against me. I need to trim down if I am not scare the children in the hotel restaurant - and if I am to get a seat on the plane!

I've been rummaging in the bargain bucket at PC World and am now addicted to a computer game called 'Fable - the lost chapters'. I've been playing it so much that when I try to go to sleep at night I can still see it, it makes me feel a bit giddy.
I have not got a clue how to play it properly and I can't track down some mushrooms and I'm sick of killing manic wasps but it's all consuming, it's also led to me cutting corners in the kitchen so meal times have been lack lustre for the ladyfriend and I've missed Ugly Betty too!

no cows = no countryside

I've got a shoulder of lamb in the oven. It's pissing buckets outside and as the cooking process is considerable I now have a few hours to fester before tea's up. I'm following a recipe by Alistair Hendy (pictured) who I rather admire, it's a no nonsense cookery book - no frills as it were.
I bought the lamb from the dreaded Tesco supermarket, it's organic and it was in the reduced section and should have been used by two days ago but what the hey. It did smell a little bovine which I take to be the scent of all that lovely lush grass the little chap had induced.
I'm itching to get my hands on a bit of old mutton (apart from the ladyfriend - just joking!) Mutton is the new black don't cha know? I'm hoping I can track it down from a local butcher. It's available to buy on the internet but I don't like the idea of meat coming through the post, chops through the letterbox is a bit of a turn off for me.
These Organic Vegetable boxes screw my nose up a bit too. A couple of old turnips and a butternut squash to make the middle classes feel ethical. I watched a woman buying goat's milk the other day in the supermarket and she looked like she'd be better off up a mountain with a bell around her neck. I deliberately didn't buy a Fairtrade pineapple today and plumped for the one which had resulted in the most exploitation instead. I don't know why, a random act of nastiness. I'm up for a bit of Fair Trade as long as it's for British Farmers these days. No more of this foreign muck and bitter old tea bags.

Along with good food programmes on my new Sky Tv there are also bad ones. I have an intense dislike of Antony Worrall Thompson - never trust a man who breathes loudly through his nose - I view Ainsley Harriott with a mixture of disgust and alarm and I can't stand that barrow boy with John Torode...for that matter I don't like John Torode either, again never trust a man who clunks his teeth on cutlery. BUT the mother of all bad food programmes at the moment is Market Kitchen.
There is a bloke on it called Matt Tebutt who really gets my goat cheese. He's nasty to fellow presenter Tana Ramsay (the wife of the omnipresent Gordon Ramsay) and he's just an utter twit. He wafts the his hand over the frying pan to smell the food whilst he's cooking and when he tastes it he takes a huge step back and jigs his arm in amazement. Yuk, yuk.
I'm rather fed up with the words "seasonal" "organic" "source" and farmers markets too. I agree with them whole heartedly, don't get me wrong, I just can't stand foodies. I went to Borough Market last year and lasted five minutes, yuppies buying yoghurt that's all it was. I love Hugh, Nigel, Jamie, Delia, Ina and Nigella but my God they've created a monster.

Christmasses are all coming at once for the Ladyfriend. The hot news today is that Bette Midler has signed a two year deal to appear at Caesar's Palace from next February! It will just take Shirley Bassey to tread the boards and it will be a veritable hat trick of joy.
I've never been to America, I've always viewed the vast country with caution preferring to watch it from the long grass but it looks like I shall creating a whopping carbon footprint in 2008.
As a there there for selling the flat the ladyfriend and I decided that we'd tour the globe doing as many Pride festivals as we could so it will be on this note that we shall head west. I've always wanted to go to San Francisco since reading the Tales of the City books so it's June for the aeroplane zoom.

Well Hello Dolly! The Ladyfriend and I have got tickets to see Baaaaaaaarbra! We had to pay through the nose (if you pardon the expression) but it's worth it. It has always been the Ladyfriend's dream to see Babs so she's gone and blown the housekeeping on her. I don't mind though, I'm not a huge fan but I've never been to the millennium dome so it will be quite nice alround, I'm quite looking forward to it. The Ladyfriend is beside herself.

More talk of May Polls only this one is of an election kind. It's the local elections today. I like these ones, I've been sent many cheery missives from average looking people anxious to represent me on the council. I've had hand written foolscap stuffed into envelopes by the elderly with mediocre office skills but with bags of enthusiasm and I've had some silly old sod ring my door bell asking me to stick a poster in my window. Down in Eastbourne there is a hardened Tory who sticks up a huge Conservative hoarding in his front garden. It's massive, but still has the old Neo-Nazi torch logo on and not the new squibbly tree. It's all about branding you know.
When I think of town halls and councils I always picture huge tea urns and small talk, town twinning and by-passes. I daresay a lot more goes on and a lot more of it goes on underhand but it's a cosey image that I'd like to keep. Thumping Grandfather clocks, bee's wax and people who look like Stephen Fry.

Sumer is icumen in - Happy May Day! I do love a May Day, no Jack In the Green for us this year, we shall all have to sit behind our desks instead of mincing around the may pole.
Last night, instead of preparing a may day hat, I was surfing the internet and found a very strange book for kiddies about the life of Shirley Bassey! I love Shirley - her new record is ace and I'm pleased as punch that her new album has got her cover of the Pink song from the M&S ad on - but I'm not sure her life and times makes good bedtime story material. This is the website that I found it on click here

I know it's awful and I do feel a pinch of guilt as I sling a jam jar in the bin but barring the odd hurricane in North London is there a downside to climate change? The Ladyfriend and I were tits up on the beach this weekend and as I read about alarming record breaking temperatures in the Independent - a paper by the way that bangs on relentlessly about global warming whilst still managing to carry full page advertisements for sleazy jet - I thought, as I slapped on the factor 15, "your point being?"
And I'm not being selfish, I remember as a youth days and miserable days spent watching Why Don't You during summer holidays as rain lashed down outside. The sun never shone and the Mini Milks stayed tucked between the steak and kidney pies in the freezer. Atleast now future generations will be able to guarantee a picnic by the lake even if it does happen to have dried up.
I'm afraid the horse has well and truly bolted on this one. If I put off a short drive in the motor to curb my carbon emissions there will be some bugger in China belching double the amount out as their economy swells like ever rising bread dough -cut me a slice I say, roll out the lazy hazy days of summer, autumn, winter and spring.

I've got to say I'm well into this SKY TV lark. I'm completely addicted to the food channels and especially the Barefoot Contessa. She's a big girl who likes her food. I constantly shriek in horror as she adds pounds and pounds of butter and sugar to her food and she bathes in double cream. Her poor husband is a ticking time bomb of a coronary just waiting to go off. I love the way she weebles around her gorgeous Hampton's home and the way she say's "that's so good" and "bazel" instead of basil.
Mind you, I reckon she must have a big fat mama of a black maid waiting out of shot of camera because she don't half make a mess and I can't see her lifting her chubby little fingers with the fairy liquid.

This is just the best. No we have broadband I have been having a butchers at youtube and guess what I found when I searched Limone? - the place where the ladyfriend and I are going on holiday. Look click here It's fantastic, how many holiday destinations have their own song? And one sung in so many different languages.