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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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