Tooting Squared

Why it's better to stay than to (try to) leave...

2011-04-17T21:19:00.004+01:00

The date is Friday April 15th. Tooting is destined for the uncharacteristically sunny North East, specifically to Newcastle where she is to stay with an old pal for a couple of days. This is how she got there ... 9:52 am - Tooting pops into ... well, Tooting to have some breakfast and run a few errands. She parks, as always, in the Sainsbury's supermarket, and goes to the cafe across the road and has a coffee and an indulgent Danish. She then goes to a couple of shops to pick a few essentials up for her trip, and then to Sainsbury's for a flying grocery shop. 11:53 am - She goes to leave Sainsbury's car park to discover that she's over-run her two hour parking allowance by a minute. "You'll have to pay the fine at the machine, madame," says the grinning attendant. WHAT?! I spend hundreds of pounds in this supermarket and you're begrudging me a flaming minute?! He continues to grin and shrug. 12:05 pm - A £10 fine later, she arrives home, unpacks the groceries into the kitchen, irons a top, packs her weekend bag, waters the plants, puts the rubbish out and puts the laundry away. 12:45 pm - She leaves the house. 12:46 pm - She goes back to the house, picks up her train ticket, and leaves again. 12:58 pm - She boards the Victoria train and makes her way to the tube to Kings Cross. 1:50 pm - She arrives with a respectable forty minutes to kill before her train leaves. She gets some cash out, buys a paper, a coffee and a sandwich. According to the display boards, her train, the 2:30pm, is "on time," the platform will be announced at 2:15pm, and the gates closed at 2:28pm. By 5:30 she'll be out in the Toon, and she's feeling perky. 2:15 pm - the platform number is not announced. 2:20 pm - the platform number is not announced. 2:25 pm - the platform number is not announced. 2:28 pm - The train status changes to "delayed". An announcement is made. "Would all passengers please note that, due to an incident at Biggleswade, some trains might be subject to delay. Please watch boards for further details." 2:40 pm - A new announcement. "Due to a person being struck by a train at Biggleswade, some trains might be subject to delay." All trains on the board now read "delayed", so there seems to be no "might" about it. A passing man in uniform mutters into a walkie-talkie as he passes that, "this shit usually lasts at least an hour." Tooting texts her pal to say she'll be a bit late. 3:15 pm - Train status changes to, "cancelled" and the tannoy crackles into life. The only option presented is to go to St Pancras and get a train via Carlisle. This will take until some time next Thursday to arrive. Alternatively, go home and try again tomorrow. 3:20 pm - She goes to advanced bookings, to switch her booking to a train in the morning. She is advised that a train has to be delayed by two hours before it is considered delayed enough to transfer tickets. But my train has been cancelled. "Not by two hours, it hasn't." The logic is beyond her. "But stick around. Things will be running again soon." Isn't this entirely NOT what she had been told five minutes ago? She shuffles, perplexed, back onto the concourse to mill aimlessly around, wondering who to believe. 3:4o pm - Tooting finds a seat next to an old lady and shares a bag of liquorice comfits with her, whilst comparing notes on destinations and plans. 3:45 pm - There is some movement over to our right. Tooting's new old lady friend says, "I think there might be a train going over there." She looks where she's pointing her crinkly arthritic finger, and see that she's right. People are going through the barriers. Without so much as a backward glance, Tooting leaps up, grabs her bags, and starts running. Survival of the fittest. Through the barriers, along the platform, past as many people as she can get before she thinks her lungs will burst, then through the next door and into a seat. Phew! 4:05 pm - The train glides out of the station. Everyone on board cheers and settles in. 5:15 pm - Just north of Grantham, the train slows and stops. We sit and wait. There is an announcement. "Sorry for the delay ladies and gentlemen. We're experiencing some signalling problems. We'll get moving again as soon as possible." 5:25 pm - "We are sorry for the ongoing delay, ladies and gentlemen. Unfortunately we are experiencing complete electrical failure between here and Newark. We are likely to be held here for some time." 5:55 pm - The train reverses back into Grantham station so that we can stretch our legs. 6:40 pm - An alternative train pulls up on the adjacent platform, and everyone pours out of one onto the other. This train will follow a diversion around the signal failure, and link up with the East Coast Mainline at Doncaster. This is a diversion which is anticipated to take an hour. 8:10 pm - We link up with the East Coast Mainline. 9:30 pm - Nearly nine hours after leaving the house, seven hours after her train was meant to depart, five and a half hours after it did depart, Tooting arrives in Newcastle, the promised land. Tired, emotional, starving, and hoping that the rest of the weekend was going to be more relaxed. Which is was.

End of an era

2011-04-05T22:51:00.003+01:00

For as many years as I can remember, the family Tooting have holidayed in Devon. First two weeks in August every year, come rain or shine. To start with we stayed at a bed and breakfast at a farm on the edge of a small town a few miles from the coast. We stayed, all four of us, in a family room, and spent the days at the beach and the evenings chasing dogs around fields. When we outgrew the family room, we started staying at the coast. In a particular village on the coast, we'd book a cottage for a fortnight, and spend our days on the beach and our evenings ... on the beach. All very idyllic. When I was about eleven, my parents booked a beach hut for the first time. It was nothing more than a shed really, but it was somewhere to put the deckchairs, and to get changed without having to do that beach-towel-shuffle that the English excel at. And the hut also came with neighbours, and they transformed the Devon experience for us. On one side, was a Yorkshire family - mother, father and their daughter just a year or so younger than me. In subsequent years, Father Yorkshire recommended his career to me, and I now do almost exactly the same thing as he did then. Yorkshire Daughter and I remain friends, largely thanks to the wonder that is Facebook. On the other, was a retired couple from Oxford. Bob and Dot. They'd have been in their late sixties I guess. He was a not-so-retired artist, and musician. She was the grounded one. They were both lovely. She encouraged my early creative endeavours, and we did the Woman's Weekly crossword together. He painted pebbles with little beach scenes and cartoon characters on for the children that played on the beach, locals and tourists alike, painting as many as 200 in a season. I've still got most of the ones he did for me over the years. He also taught me to play cribbage, patiently taking me through the complicated scoring; fifteen-two, fifteen-four and the rest won't score, and he drove us all mad with his one-man ukulele shows. Over the last twenty years, we have all grown up together. The nine of us in those three huts are 180 years older between us. We have, between us, bought four houses and countless cars. One of us has got married. We have collectively buried seven parents and one child. Three of us have got university degrees and new careers and four of us have retired. And today one of us died. Bob, 89 years old now, couldn't shake off a chest infection, and today it got the better of him. I feel that the world is a gloomier place tonight. I feel wistful that this summer we won't be regaled with the ukulele, or be given a new beautifully painted pebble. I feel a great loss that I've lost my first, and still my favourite cribbage partner. And I feel sad that this year, our original nine will be eight. So, in memory of a great man, and a greater couple, I'm giving you this lovely Video Nation clip of a few years ago, which I watch from time to time when I need my faith restoring in the human race. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Ukulele Bob.

I saw the light (well ... almost)

2011-03-22T19:29:00.004Z

Today, thanks to a mid afternoon "meeting" (ahem) out of the office I was able to get away a bit earlier than usual.

This, combined with the thrill of ever lengthing days meant that it was still light as my train pulled out of Victoria.

I'd forgotten what a difference that makes to a girl's journey home, so, excited at the prospect of a real view, I fired up my camera ready to take a photo along the river - Albert Bridge, Battersea Park and Chelsea beyond.

Then, as we got to the bridge, the Gatwick Express, packed full of smug so-and-sos heading for the airport, raced past me and blocked the view.

So that's why there's no photo on this post. I didn't think you needed to see a snap of the sun setting behind the Gatwick Express. There'll be more light evenings and more views won't there? I mean ... we've got the whole summer unfolding in front of us!

Feeling Crafty?

2011-03-18T23:35:00.002Z

The lovely Gillian from over yonder at Fabric Nation is a crafty clever lady.

One day, a little while ago, she spoke to me about setting up some sort of crafty workshoppy something or other. It all sounded like a grand idea. But there was a wee bit of something missing that we couldn't quite put our fingers on.

Then, you might recall, in January, we did this to celebrate young Concetta's birthday, and it all sort of fell into place.

So, starting from 2nd April, and then on the first Saturday of every (yes ... EVERY!) month we are hosting a crafty workshop at the Tooting Tram and Social.

If you find yourselves knocking around south west London one weekend, wanting something crafty to do, then come along. Here's the griff ...

Gratitude

2011-03-13T23:19:00.002Z

A very good friend (in fact, my rock) over at Perpetual Motion pointed out to me recently that I've rather let my blogging fall by the wayside.

"Oi!" she delicately started, "get back to that blog!"

"I've got nothing left to say." I told her.

"Rubbish," was her poignant reply.

That was a week ago, and since then I've been mulling over what to write, when to write, how to write.

Do you have one of those friends who you owe an email? Someone who you didn't reply to right away, then it got to a week, then two, three, four weeks, and you realise that any message you send now has to be REALLY good to excuse the hiatus? Well that's how I've come to feel about this writing malarky. I let it go too long and it got harder and harder to pick it up smoothly.

But I have also realised another thing this last week.

When I first started writing this blog, I was in a fairly gloomy place. I had lots of nice things happening in my life, but I just couldn't shake off the cloud that permanently hung over me. I technically started the blog mainly so that I could promote my jewellery and crafting and arty things, but I realised pretty quickly that it was a good outlet.

So there were days when my enthusiasm for writing something astute or amusing made me keep my eyes and ears open and see things. It was good for me. I took notice. I looked up instead of down when I walked. I spent my time alone mulling over positive things instead of wallowing. It was all good.

And there were days when a bit of well placed positive thought wasn't enough, and I wrote something less up-beat, and that was a therapy in itself. Is it the whole, "a problem shared" thing, do you think? Or is it just that the written word helps you order your thought?

Either way, penning a few considered words a few times a week was cathartic and here I am in Spring 2011, in a much more positive frame of mind. I see skies are blue, and red roses too. Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. I feel good.

So I think that, perhaps, the reason for the slowing of my blogging has been, quite simply, because I don't need to anymore.

But I want to. So I'll pick it up again, and only write about the things I want to write about, and hopefully never again write about things that I need to write about. And for that, I am grateful.

Will you ...

2011-02-14T20:52:00.001Z

... be my secret Valentine?

Love from
???

x

Love is all around

2011-02-13T00:35:00.010Z

Good friends were in London this weekend, staying with other good friends, so a couple of us gatecrashed their lovely evening for curry and chat. It was the chat you have with people that you've known for twenty years that we craved, and it was this that we got.

After our food, when we were all stretched out around the room, groaning under the weight of our curry-filled bellies, Lorraine turned to Andy and asked him, "do you have a man-crush?"

"Ian Waite" said Andy, quick as a flash. The room fell silent for a fraction of a second, before we all shouted something. Ian Waite, for the uninitiated was one of the professional dancers on our Strictly Come Dancing. Usually, when he's on the telly-box, he is clad something like this ...

Andy said, in defence of his quick answer, that he had previously discussed the man-crush / girl-crush thing with colleagues, so had already given the matter some consideration. Still, the answer tripped a little too quickly off his tongue, don't you think?

Why, you might ask, did Lorraine think to ask such a thing? Well, it's because her husband, Simon, has developed something of a man-crush himself. He is smitten with Nigel Barker, a judge on America's Next Top Model, and fashion photographer. He is not someone who I was aware of, so we googled him, and decided that Simon had good taste. In fact, Angela went as far as to say, "oh yeah" in her don't-mind-if-I-do voice.

Simon felt the need to clarify something though. "Don't get me wrong. If he came in here and asked me, I'd probably still say no." Did anyone else notice the use of the word, "probably"? We all did...

Naturally, we turned our attention to Mark next, and mercifully his answer, at least, was not on the tip of his tongue. He thought about it long and hard. There was a lot of head scratching, and, at last, the votes having been counted and verified, he gave us his decision. Guy Pearce. A quirky choice, I think, and not someone who'd be in many people's top tens, but look at him?

Mark's right. He is quite a hottie. We do still think that Simon has the best taste in men, but I think Mark is a close second. I wonder whether it was his performance as Mike in Neighbours, King Edward in The King's Speech, or Felicia in Priscilla that sealed the deal where Mark is concerned.

It would be unkind, I think, to hang the boys out to dry, without telling you that, of course, we three girls gave it some thought too. Angela admitted that she used to have a thing for Cheryl Cole, but that she didn't any more. I'm not sure what it was that CC did to lose Angela's love, but lost it she has. "It's really always been Natalie Portman," she declared. It was said in such a matter-of-fact way that I wondered whether, in fact, we didn't all secretly slightly love her ourselves. I mean, she's very beautiful, talented, strong moral values, good balance between Hollywood glamour, and girl-next-door charms. Perhaps she's the perfect girl for us all.

"I think, I'm going with Billie Piper," said Lorraine. Again, attractive and yet down-to-earth. Another good choice I'd say. and, as we speculated, she's bound to have learned a thing or two filming Secret Diary Of A Call Girl (a role which has, I understand, earned her the dubious title of Britain's Best Loved Prostitute. Her husband must ooze with pride). Anyway, it can't be denied that she'll have a trick or two up her sleeves, so I say nice choice Lorraine.

And me? Who shall I have for my girl-crush? Well, I also toyed with Cheryl Cole, and then, at the opposite end of the spectrum, Helena Bonham Carter, but I settled, in the end, for Claudia Winkleman. I don't know why. The reckless combination of posh and a bit mental? The extravagant and supremely fabulous use of vast amounts of eye liner? The carefree manner of saying exactly the words that are passing through her head without a care for the fact she's on the telly? Who knows. But I do know that, if I have to chose just the one lady-love, then for me, it's the Winkle.

Therapy

2011-02-05T00:37:00.004Z

Today has been one of my favourite days of the month.

I think I've told you before about Making Night. Once a fortnight a gang of us get together at someone's house, and we ... um ... make stuff. Everyone brings whatever creative thing they are working on at the time, and we sit around, drink wine, eat junk food, and gossip. We stitch, cut, sketch, stick, string, knit and knot, and set the world to rights, and I love it.

We've become good pals, the lot of us, and there's something very bonding about creating lovely things together. Seeing the projects other people have on is quite inspiring, and the diversity of the projects that we've seen between us in the last six months is quite fabulous. Paper dolls and patchwork quilts, brooches and bracelets, collage and crochet. But mostly, of course, the good chat is what makes our creative nights most lovely.

Making jewellery, and working on my various cutting-and-sticking projects is something that I love. It's the thing that keeps me sane. Taking a pile of stuff and turning it into something new is a real therapy. The process is cathartic and the outcome is fulfilling. You should try it. If you are someone who finds that life can, on occasion, be a little over-whelming, then it's about the best means of keeping your bloody pressure down. But the life of a maker can be a solitary one. It's pretty well a solo venture. I'm all for team work, but it's pretty hard to make a pair of earrings as a gang. These fortnightly get-togethers make crafting more sociable, which pretty well makes it the full package.

Anyway, tonight was at my house. Six of us squidged into my dining room and had a right royal time. They all went home an hour or so ago (with a few picture frames, some cards, a charcoal sketch, two wash bags, and a bathroom curtain between us) and I thought I'd sit down and write a quick few words before I turn in.

When I first started writing this blog, I had in mind that it would be a sort of back up to my crafty habit. It was to promote making and doing and creativity. But it didn't really end up like that. There were too many things happening in the world around me that I wanted to comment on to be restricted to chat about beads and buttons. But tonight, I'm feeling very much like I want to encourage everyone to go and make something and see how good it is.

Go on. Run along and find a ball of wool or your mother's button box, or a needle and thread and DO something. Let's face it, there's nothing on the telly, so you're missing nothing. And tell me what you decide to make, so that we can compare notes.

Now where did I leave that crochet hook?

[Postscript: A big HELLO! to the girls in South Africa! Concetta told me that you'd left a note on her blog to say that you're struggling to leave a message on mine, which I'm sorry to hear. Perhaps I've over-done the spam filter. I'll fiddle with the settings. But it's lovely to have heard from you. Please keep trying to leave a message, and I'll look out for you! x]

Young and sweet

2011-01-27T22:53:00.002Z

I don't like Abba.

There. I said it. Goodbye last two readers ...

It seems like heresy to say that Abba are bad. Feels a bit like saying that puppies are bastards or that Dr Who is shit (which I might yet come back to ...) but there you have it. I don't like Abba.

Let me ask you something. If they were not the phenomenon that is Abba, and you just heard one song at random, would you think it was any good, or would you switch off? I would be prepared to bet that you would switch off. And maybe swear at the DJ. Essentially it is just any other bit of low calibre Euro-pop, and if it weren't for Benny and Bjorn's marketing team, we wouldn't be interested.

It's not just the faintly oom-pah melodies that vex me. The lyrics are essentially shit too. I'm reminded endlessly of those Chinese instruction manuals that are ineptly translated into English.

You don't feel the beat of a tambourine, however young you are. "Last show" and "Glasgow" don't technically rhyme. And "the loser's standing small" means nothing. The lyrics of Take A Chance essentially say that, if you've tried EVERYTHING else and NOTHING has worked, then I'll be sitting here waiting for you. Like a loser. Or, in fact, like someone who describes themselves as being nothing special, "in fact I'm a bit of a bore."

What a load of rubbish.

I'd always kept this Abba-hate to myself until a couple of years ago. I was having a small crisis one weekend and had spent some time on the phone to my bestest pal, being counselled and talked from the brink. Later that same morning she called back. "Quick, quick! Turn the radio on! They're doing an Abba special! That's SURE to cheer you up." WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS?! It all spilled out, and that was it. My dirty little Abba-hating secret was out, and was met with a stunned silence.

Scroll forward, if you will, to yesterday morning. The afore mentioned friend's daughter is now almost seven. For Christmas she got a portable CD player, and music is her new best hobby. On Wednesday morning her father found her an Abba CD, and, some time during the getting-ready-for-school process, she appeared at her mother's elbow listening to the "Greatest" Hits at top volume, declaring that she would play it for me next time I went to stay.

"Why don't you call her now?" her mother (my former friend) suggested.

And so it was that yesterday morning, before I'd had my first coffee of the day, I answered the phone to a small voice declaring, with glee, "I've got a surprise for you!" Really? What? "Wait a second ..." Long pause. Pause. Pause.

The introduction of Dancing Queen bellowed down the 'phone.

AAAAGGGGHHHHHH!!! Get off my phone!!!

"Hang on," she said, "what about this one?"

Voulez Vous.

GET OFF, GET OFF, GET OFF!!

"Or this one?" she snorted, between giggles.

Waterloo.

She could hardly speak for laughing.

"Daddy gave me the CD and Mummy told me to call you!" she hooted.

I had to laugh. I LOVE that she teases me. But I'll need to buy her some ear 'phone's for her birthday, or she and I will fall out.

Feel the beat on THAT tambourine, sweetheart!

This Weekend (20) ...

2011-01-10T21:49:00.002Z

It's the return of This Weekend!

Thing is, the weekend after This Weekend 19 sucked, and there weren't ten things to say about it that weren't 1) shitty, 2) pissy, 3) wanky, 4) ... You get the drift. Then the weekend after that was a bit crappy too, and then I sort of got out of the This Weekend groove.

But this weekend was fricking ORSUM so I've decided to resurrect the old fave!

And it went like this...

1) Thursday evening. A sneaky drink after work to celebrate a colleague's 25th birthday. 25. TWENTY FIVE! I can remember being 25. Just. If he wasn't such a nice young man, I'd dislike him a little for the sheer cheek of being 25 years old in MY workplace.

2) And on Friday I had the typical list of six hundred things to do, but I started by going to my new favourite shop, Quirky Dovetail, which is what I want my house to be like. I wanted something to put the telly on that isn't the £19, eleven year old Ikea table that it's currently on. There wasn't anything in the shop that was quite right, but the lovely lady nipped into the back and came out with a FAB-U-LOUS table that she's going to paint a FAB-U-LOUS colour, and inset with FAB-U-LOUS fabric and will be more perfect than the thing that I thought I was going to get. So that was nice.

3) Then I went to see the lovely Gillian of Fabric Nation so that we could make some Lucky Love Bags. I'll tell you why later. But WHAT JOY! to sit in Gillian's back bedroom. Her fabric studio. It's heaven! Every time I cast my eye around I saw something else fabulous to lay my eyes on. It was all I could do not to steal little bits of loveliness and take them home.

4) Friday night was Making Night. I must have told you about this before, I'm sure? It's fast becoming a favourite night in my calendar. Every other week a gang of us girls get together at someone's house, take something crafty and something to eat or drink, and we all sit 'round doing our thing and gassing. On Friday we were at Emma's house. Gillian knitted a sock, Emma knitted a scarf, Amelia embroidered some instructions, Kate made a felt carrot, Concetta drew, Silvia cut out paper butterflies and Lynn read a book (I bloody love Lynn's style!) I, in a feat of extreme jewelling, made FOURTEEN pairs of earrings and a bead flower. Oh ... and we set fire to Emma's kitchen a little bit ...

5) Saturday was marvellous. I'm going to divide it into two bits. Firstly we lunched to celebrate the 40th birthday (can you believe?) of the most lovely Concetta. She booked a table at a favourite pub in Tooting for twelve of us to have a nice ladies lunch together. All very chilled out. We talked about loads of stuff, all of which was lovely, and almost none of which I can recall. I suspect that's the sign of a good conversation. What a lovely lot of ladies we met too!

6) Then Gillian and I hoofed along to the sister pub along the road to set up for Part II of the party ... a crafty workshop for everyone. Everyone got a Lucky Love Bag (see point 3 above) which contained their starter kits, and some lovely goodies. And then everyone made a fabric flower brooch with the guidance of Gillian and a charm bracelet under my watchful eye. It was just fab! The pub were fabulous hosts and the table we were given couldn't have been more perfect and our party guests were gorgeously crafty and the results of their hard work were ace! And, on balance, we thought we might do it more often ...

7) But I opted to leave the girls to it pretty early on because I knew I had a big Sunday too. I'll say that again, in case you didn't catch it. I left the pub early. I. Left. The. Pub. (I emphasise it because it's so remarkable).

8) On Sunday morning I was up at sparrow's fart for a trip. I had to go to Harrogate for work, so I went a day early to catch up with some friends. A train journey is a lovely thing, don't you think? I settled myself in at my window seat, with a large latte and a new book. I would love to tell you that it was a bit of classic literature, or some quality contemporary fiction, but I can't. It's the last of the Twilight books. It's SO trashy, it's not true, but I do seem to be lapping it up. I can only apologise to the Furzedown Bookclub. I'll be tendering my resignation henceforth.

9) Lovely Laura met me off the train and took me to Betty's Tea Room for lunch, where we caught up on lots of news. Laura and I are the daughters of parents who holiday in a particular Devon village every year for the same fortnight, so we've sort of grown up together, but only for a long weekend every year. This is the first time that we've seen one another away from Devon. And also the first time, now I come to think of it, that we've seen one another wearing more than a swimsuit and flip-flops. Lots of firsts.

10) And whilst we were channel hopping before bedtime, we found a documentary about hairy women. I don't know what to tell you, apart from the fact that I now feel smooth and beautiful.

One week down ...

2011-01-06T23:41:00.002Z

... 51 to go.

I've done it. I've got to the end of the first working week of 2011. Three WHOLE days done. Well done me. Pat on the back. Thank you very much.

I know it's not much, but MY WORD this has been a hard week. I'm more shattered than a really shattered thing, and never have I been more glad of my four day working week (not that I don't have the usual six million things to do this weekend, of course).

So, what has 2011 offered thus far?

Well, my diet hasn't been going as well as it could have, but it's not been a disaster either. Especially not if you gloss over the jaffa cake incident of last night. Tuesday morning is weigh-in morning, so I suppose time will tell.

And, after MONTHS of nagging (yes! Nagging!) from 'er over at Perpetual Motion, I've started my regime of walking to and from the station to the office, instead of getting on the oh-so-convenient bus. In order to make this a viable option time-wise, I need to speed walk (like those people on the telly who waddle with their bottoms out) so my leg musceles ache a bit now. I suppose that's a good sign.

The other resolution is going great guns though. I am not procrastinating. I'm really not. I think of the next thing I ought to do and I do it. I don't think it'll last, but it's not a bad start. I've even arranged for a man to come tomorrow and give me a quote to fix my wobbly garden fence.

What else happened this week? A man came to bring some post of mine that had been incorrectly delivered by the idiot postman, and was followed from his house to mine by his cat, which, he told me, is called Fido because he tails people like a dog.

Umm... I took down all my Christmas cards and cut them up to make next year's gift tags, realising the second I finished that I'd turned into my mother.

I went to the Other Pub Quiz with Soph and Steve; a quiz at which we always come fourth, and came EIGHTH! Oh, the shame! We were DREADFUL!

And our new graduate surveyor celebrated his birthday today. He's 25. Twenty five. He was born in 1986, for crying out loud.

And I think that's about it for this week. Not much at all. Just a gentle run into the year. But I don't think I could have coped with a great deal more, so that's just fine! Another 51 slow weeks like this would make for a dull, but realxing year. Bring it on!

Youth

2011-01-03T19:32:00.002Z

I get teased by my colleagues.

There are nights that they go to the opening party for a new designer boutique and drink champagne and eat canapes whilst I go to book club.

There are weekends that they spend going to parties and clubs whilst I paint my dining furniture.

There are Fridays which they spend in bars drinking and smoking whilst I hang blinds in my bathroom.

But never have I been so aware of my being a middle aged lady in a thirty-somethings clothing as when doing the crossword this weekend with friends. Having poured over the downs and the acrosses for some time, and got to the point of having only the really hard clues left, she read out a clue she knew I couldn't possibly know the answer to.

"Glass for drinking a large measure of sherry."

I missed not a beat. "Schooner."

She looked at me in a whithering way and, with some scepticism, checked the dictionary. And I sat with my head down, realising that somehow, in 2010, I became my own grandmother.

Being resolutionary

2011-01-02T22:09:00.002Z

New year's resolutions are more than a little pointless, don't you think? Why wait until January 1st to start something new? Why put off until tomorrow what you can do today? Why think to yourself, "I must start going to the gym more often ... but not yet!" "I'd really like to spend more time with my family ... but I'll give it a couple of weeks before I start." "I'm going to take up the violin ... and second now."

But I realise that I'm a bit anti-establishment about these things. I'm a bit inclined to not tow the line just because there's a line that ought to be towed. And I'm trying to be more open minded. Really I am.

I gave myself the New Year that I wanted this year - a night in with the telly, some crafting, and bottle of Merlot (bliss!), but I decided that I would make an effort, and make some resolutions this year. Two resolutions, in fact.

Firstly, I will lose weight. Properly, I mean. Not just a namby pamby effort to shed two pounds before I give in and start eating mars bars for breakfast, but an ACTUAL regime of dieting. I will weigh myself every week and write it down and eat only the good things and almost none of the bad things, and I won't enjoy it, but I'll do it. That's my first resolution. And now I've told all of you, I will have to do it, if only to save face.

Secondly, I will stop procrastinating. I will stop reading emails and then closing them, but will answer them immediately. I will stop dodging voicemails, or carrying around letters that need answering for weeks. I will stop putting off visits, or delaying tasks. I will do what needs doing when it needs doing. And I think that it's just possible that, if I get into good habits, I will be able to actually do everything that I commit myself to in 2011.

Others might imply that other resolutions would me more apt. That I should be better at holding my tongue, be more patient, kinder, or more tolerant. Or that I could do with acting my age, and not the age of someone twenty years older than I am. Or maybe that I should take more of an interest in current affairs, and politics.

But this girl knows her limits. Less food, and more organisation are the orders of the day in this house. Starting from ... well, maybe tomorrow ...

Then and now

2010-12-23T23:38:00.002Z

Time was that by 23rd December I was knackered as a result of 23 days of parties, drinks dos, dinners, and theatre trips. December was a write off vis a vis sleep, and rest. Consequently, come 24th December, every year, I'd get sick, and spend Christmas day sniffling, and wheezing and dozing off.

This year I've spent December planning for and attending craft fairs, sitting up until the wee-small hours stringing beads until my eyes watered. I've been out, of course. I am not a girl who goes long without a glass of red in her hand. But it's not been the nightly occurrence that it was of Decembers a decade ago. Yet still I'm knackered. Still I only finished my Christmas shopping yesterday. Still I've only just wrapped everything. And STILL I'm now sniffling a bit and feeling a bit under the weather. Still, it's traditional I suppose.

Of course, the whole thing used to culminate in Christmas Eve drinks. The gang of terrific friends that I grew up with would all descend on the Beauty of Bath, the seediest pub in England, and drink wine out of a tap, and warm lager, and generally make merry, then all stumble back to one of our houses and see if we could catch Santa in the act of putting out the presents. We never did.

But these days, most of the gang live away, and the time in the home town for Christmas is precious. Plus they all have children, and apparently Christmas is all about them. Honestly. Kids are SO me, me, me. Pah! So the boozy night out doesn't happen now.

Back in the day when it should have been all about ME, I would fret. In retrospect, I was a nervous child. On Christmas Eve, when I was small, I would lie in bed for hours worrying about what presents I might have been bought. I don't mean that I worried that I would get what I wanted, but what if I was bought something that I really didn't want, and then I'd have to say I liked it, and it would have been a waste, and how would I pretend to like it, and ... and ... and ... Like I say, I was an anxious wee thing.

Now, I sleep like a log. All the time, actually (another post for another time, I think, on a theme of my semi-narcoleptic tendencies). The red wine helps, of course. But I don't worry so much about what I might or might not get any more. Nothing, after all, can be as hard to be positive about as the year I was bought a roll of draught excluder tape by my mother. I worry more that people will like what I've bought them. This year I think I've got Brother and Father Tooting sorted, but I suspect that Mother Tooting will upcycle my gifts to her. Again ...

And decorations used to be a big thing to us Tootings. They'd go up not the weekend RIGHT before Christmas, but the weekend before that. A tree that touched the ceiling, adorned with EVERY bauble in the box, including the ones we made at nursery, the ones that came free in Happy Meals, the ones that were broken, but still shiny. If you could still see tree, there wasn't enough on it. Then we'd hang streamers from the ceiling, and hook things over the pictures, and put a second small tree in the front window, and lights in the outside tree, and dangly things along the hall ceiling and a garland up the stairs and a wreath on the door and mistletoe in the doorway (x) and more besides.

My house is minimalist. There's no tree. I just think it'd be in the way, wherever it went. And absolutely no streamers. There's a garland on the stairs, and a six inch tall sparkly tree on the mantle piece, and the mistletoe, of course. And that's about it.

So tomorrow, I'm off to the Tooting country residence for a couple of happy family days; odd presents, giant mental tree, and all.

Happy Christmas to everyone in blogland. Have a good one!
x

What did you do today?

2010-12-15T21:58:00.007Z

I turned my lounge from this ...

... to this ...

And my dining room from this ...

... to this ...

All in the interests of the Handmade In Tooting Christmas Market.

Nine lovely creative friends have pulled together to turn my house into a two day market, selling our lovely wares, to lovely people in lovely surroundings (even if I do say so ...) listening to lovely music and drinking lovely mulled wine.

I've had a great day!

And I get to do it ALL again tomorrow!

If any of you are in the south west London area, and fancy dropping in, drop me a line and I'll send you directions.

A Tale of Dexterity, Co-Ordination and Social Grace

2010-12-08T23:30:00.003Z

Today was our company Christmas party. In fact, I suspect that, for some, it's still ongoing. But I am an old and tired and a bit decrepit, so I sloped out early.

It's been fun though. A couple of hours at the pleasingly grubby Bloomsbury Lanes; an exercise which proved who had the mis-spent youth, then a quick drink in a seedy pub, before going to the frightfully sophisticated Charlotte Street Hotel for an aperitif, then a fancy Soho restaurant for dinner.

It is in the Charlotte Street Hotel bar that my tale unfolds.

It was busy when we arrived, but the ten of us battled through to the bar and, once there, realised that it was as good a place as any to set up camp. Over the course of our first half an hour, we were shunted around by the natural push and shuffle, and ended up at the action end of the bar. The end that the immaculately dressed, and frightfully efficient waiters were serving from. Every time one of them darted past us with a tray of drinks for the lucky buggers with a table, they had to dodge around us, mumbling their, "excuse me madam, excuse me sir." Not once did any of these charming people ask us to move. They just glided around us.

Meanwhile, largely oblivious to the fact that we were clearly in the way we mingled and gossipped and laughed and drank.

In the course of the mingling, I wound up chatting to our newest recruit; a lovely young graduate trainee by the name of JW. (I'm not abbreviating his name in the interests of poetic licence. His name is actually JW. No ... I don't understand it either. Still, he is a lovely young man). Throughout our conversation, I was aware of JW's eyes darting over my shoulder. Something had his attention, but as I half turned to see what it was, his hand shot out and grabbed my arm. "Don't look!" he hissed. The impertinence of youth! Pah!

He leaned in, and gestured for me to do the same. "I think I know the bloke sitting behind you," he whispered, followed by another, "DON'T look," through gritted teeth. "I think I went to school with him. But I'm not entirely sure. I don't want to say hello in case it's not him and I'm just a tosser saying hello to strangers in a bar."

I was sympathetic, obviously. "Just say hello. We won't laugh if it's not him. Honest ..." JW didn't buy it.

Discretely, I made him switch places with me so that I could look at the bloke in question. Well. I say discretely. I was on my second gin cocktail, so who knows. The table now behind JW had three people sitting at it. Two were middle aged women, unmistakably sisters. The third was a lad about JW's age, and presumably the son of one of the two women. As I looked on, his eyes flicked our way a couple of times. He appeared to be working out whether he knew JW too. The two of them edged around one another, not quite making eye contact. But the mood at the table was frosty. The two women snipped a little at one another, and the lad was largely mute. Something had occurred, and the cool mood lingered.

The conversation in our group, meanwhile sprinted on, and turned to anecdotes about school friends, mistaken identity, Facebook, and more. We were just finishing our drinks when the boss caught my eye to say it was time to go.

Still talking as we pulled our coats on, none of us really noticed one of the super-slick waiter heading for the end of the bar. We didn't notice him slalom his way through our group. We didn't notice the tray of empty glasses that he carried.

Then two things happened at the same time. JW said, "it is him. I'm sure of it. I'm going to say hello." Simultaneously, I put my left arm into the sleeve of my coat, and stretched it out, and in doing so, swiped the underside of the passing waiter's tray. His dexterity being superior to my own, he managed to adjust his balance, and keep all the empty glasses upright. Only one glass ... the one full of water ... teetered. For a moment, it hung on the edge of the tray at a precarious angle, and then, in slow motion, tipped.

It fell down the back of the chair of one of the two middle aged women, upside down ,spilling the water down her back. Her white blouse was instantly transparent, and she was left sitting in a pool of water. The glass then bounced off the chair and onto the floor, smashing into a million tiny pieces.

There are occasions when you say sorry, and know that it doesn't come close. And on those occasions, the best thing to do is to leave. So that's what we did.

But not before JW went to say hello to his friend. In spite of the fact that his new colleague had just attempted to drown his mother, JW leaned over and said, "Ryan, hi! How's it going?"

And it turned out, it wasn't Ryan at all. It was a stranger. A total stranger. Boy did JW look like a tosser.

Detoots Guide To Modern Manners

2010-12-05T21:58:00.002Z

Do you ever find the palm of your hand itching with the effort of not smacking total strangers who behave badly in your presence?

I do.

Today, as I sat in the caff enjoying a coffee and a danish, I realised that my teeth were grinding due to the behaviour of a girl at the next table.

She was enjoying a full English breakfast, and, whilst she chewed, she banged her cutlery on her plate in time with her chomping jaw. The energy that it took to not swing around and pound my fists on her table was sufficient to power several eco-unfriendly light bulbs.

Then I went into Sainsburys, where I was barged out of the way by an old lady to get a shopping trolley, stood in front of, walked into, rammed, ignored, and queue-jumped. By the time I got back in the car, I was fizzing. Then the same thing happened again, on the roads of Tooting.

Is it too much to think that people might be a little bit, just a weeny bit, socially aware? Too much to hope that some people would acknowledge that everyone on the bus doesn't need to hear them shout into their phone? Too much to hope that, once in a while, someone might say, "no, no REALLY, after you..."? Too much to hope for a simple "please" and "thank you" once in a while?

On my way home, I swung 'round to a friend's house, and arrived as her two young sons were finishing their lunch. Georgie, aged five, asked, "Mummy, can I have a biscuit?" "Can you have a biscuit what?" Dutifully, he replied, "can I have a biscuit please?" The biscuit was handed over. Isaac, aged two, learning from his brother's mistake, simply held his hand out and said, "please". He's a smart kid. He knows that only one word matters.

So tell me this. At what age do you stop telling people that they need to be polite? Should I have turned around to the twenty-something cutlery banger in the caff, and said, "do we bang our cutlery? No we do not!" Should I have said to the pushy old lady, "please don't push. It's not polite." Would it be wrong to say to the shouty girl on the bus, "Shhhh. Everyone doesn't want to hear." Is this the answer? Should I simply treat them the way I would an unruly five year old?

Or is it ok to satisfy the itchy palm, and just smack anyone who's rude to me in public?

There's no place like ...

2010-11-29T23:50:00.002Z

I've had a long standing arrangement to go to a friend's new house for dinner tonight.

She's a friend from a former job. She worked in my department, but in a different office, and she married a man who worked in my office, but in a different department (Following? Good!) Anyway, they're both about the same age as me, both do, to all effect and both do the same thing as me.

Here's the crack. They bought flats independently when they were pretty fresh to working life, then sold the two to buy one, sold that, bought another, sold that at the peak of the market, moved into a rental, and have now bought this; a house that had been sloshing around at the bottom of the market for long enough that it was reduced to about three quarters of its initial asking price, costing them just shy of seven figures.

Today I got the guided tour. And it was pretty hard not to draw a few comparisons.

Their neighbours are retired army majors and stockbrokers. Mine are youth workers and mini-cab drivers. Their neighbour's children drive Fiat 500s that they were given for their 18th birthdays. Mine steal their mother's second hand Corsas when they see a chance. Their garage is a detached, oak beamed building. Mine is ... well, it's non-existent.

Everything in their new pad screamed class. The six ring range in the kitchen. The American style fridge-freezer. The utility room with underfloor heating. All four of the bedrooms, and all three of the bathrooms. The summer house. The driveway with an "in" and an "out" gate. It all just reeked of success and glamour and being a proper adult. I felt more than a little like I might not have made the best of every opportunity.

So here I am now, in my house with only four burners on the stove, two bedrooms, and one bathroom, and ... can you believe ... no utility room, garage, or driveway at all (oh, the shame!) But when I came in, the house was nice and toasty warm, and it struck me that their house had been a little cold. And whilst I don't have a two-seater sofa in my bedroom, I do much prefer the lovely rich blue on my bedroom walls to the beigey cream on theirs. And I might only have the one bathroom, but it is massive, so lots of people could ablute in there at the same time if they wanted ...

So on balance, I'm inclined to say that you can keep your million pound residence in Surrey. For this girl, there's no place like Tooting.

A Terribly Exciting Adventure

2010-11-11T22:42:00.002Z

I have a little brother. Well, I say he's little, but he'll be 30 next year. Imagine! Me with a 30 year old little brother. I know ... I don't look old enough.

But anyway ...

He and his lady friend live in domestic harmony in Loughborough, with their small furry housemate, Charlie the Hamster. Charlie is a lady hamster. When they first got her, they didn't know if she was a she or if she was a he, so they gave her an androgynous name. Having established that she was a girl hamster (or, at least, not endowed as a boy hamster should be) they determined that Charlie was short for Baroness Charleston P. Hamster The First. Naturally.

They make a happy trio, Brother, Lady and Charlie. It's a living arrangement that works well for all parties. That is, it did until ...

... three weeks ago, when disaster struck! Brother Tooting trotted downstairs from his morning ablutions to find an empty cage! Charlie-mouse the Hamster had escaped! Her door was ajar, her cotton wool bed was empty, her night-time choccie drops untouched. She was vanished without trace. No note. No clues. No hamster. Just an empty cage.

They turned the place upside down, looking under things, behind things, around things, inside things, and on top of things that could be tempting to a hamster, but to no avail.

Brother was anxious. He suspected that he might have been the one who had left the cage door open, and that Charlie's escape might therefore he his fault. He was also aware that there had been a bag of recycling waiting to go out just before escape was noticed. Perhaps she had seen a big bag of bedding and rooted in, only to be put out for the bin men in the morning.

On an estate frequented by foxes and populated by cats, no-one liked Charlie-mouse's chances if she'd got out of the house, and no-one really thought that she was still in the house. No-one voiced their feelings, but everyone thought that Charlie had gone to hamster heaven. After a couple of days of food trails not being followed back to the tantalisingly open cage door, the assumption was that she'd gone never to return. Poor, poor Charlie.

Two days ago, there was a knock at the door. Brother opened it to find his neighbour on the door step. "Have you lost a guinea pig?" "Erm. A hamster. We've lost a hamster." "Yeah, that's right. It's in our kitchen."

The neighbours had come down that morning to find a "guinea pig" sitting in their cat's food bowl, chomping away. When they approached, the "guinea pig" had scarpered behind the fridge, so they didn't get a good look. Presumably leading them to think that it was several times larger and guinea pig shaped. Slightly sceptically, Brother put Charlie's cage in the neighbour's kitchen that night, door open and homey looking, and would you believe it, but Charlie came home!

Three weeks! Where has she been? Did she get carried away in the bin bag, and slowly wend her way home, only to take a wrong turn and go into the wrong house? Had she been next door all along, nibbling on tasty cat food? Could she have been to visit a hammy cousin in the country, and missed the train home?

Who knows.

All we know is that she went away, and now she's home ...

... until the next time ...

It's so beautiful, but what does it mean?

2010-11-07T22:19:00.002Z

What with one thing and another, my garden hadn't been put to bed for the winter, and consequently, what had, in the summer, been a lovely haven of tranquility had become a jungle. The shrubs almost met in the middle, the weeds were knocking at the window to be let in, and a climber was making its way along the washing line from the back wall towards the house.

Frankly there could have been things living out there. Bears, lions or monsters. Really. I'd never have known.

Anyway, today I ran out of excuses, so despite the biting cold, I put on my mucky gardening clothes and hit the back yard.

I'm not going to lie to you. It was hard work. Hard. Work. I really grafted, up one side of the garden, along the back wall, and down the other side to the Big Bed. I dug up weeds, lopped back shrubs, pruned, tied up, nipped ends, replanted, dug up, dug down, swept and even dug one whole plant right out of the ground. Deliberately, I mean.

So, there I was, almost finished, when the first big fat ploppy drops of rain started falling. Heck! Sweep, sweep, sweep, and gather up the last stuff and fling it in a sack and collect up the tools and sweep up again and move the bench back and put the chairs away in the shed and ... and ... and ...

A neighbour ran out into her garden to gather in her washing from the rain, and suddenly shouted back into the house, "girls, come quick! There's a double rainbow!" And she was right. There is was. One rainbow inside another rainbow. So I finished up and stood in the rain for a minute looking.

And then I started laughing to myself, because I remembered this guy, and I realised that he's right. They really are pretty amazing!

Two letters

2010-11-04T22:06:00.002Z

Letter #1

Dear Bob Crow

Another tube strike, eh? Thanks for that.

So just to clarify, you're objecting to the possibility that some of your ticket office staff will be made redundant, and you're objecting on safety grounds?

90% of tube passengers now use the Oyster cards that YOU pioneered, and which are charged up at a machine. That doesn't mean that your ticket office staff might be made redundant. That means that your ticket office staff ARE redundant. If you started recruiting professional lead swingers, they'd be more useful than ticket office staff.

And Bob, losing these people poses a risk to safety? Really? REALLY? Have you SEEN your ticket office staff in action? If I thought for one second that my safety was in the hands of your ticket office staff, I wouldn't get on a tube train again. Actually, cramming all the people that usually use the tube onto the buses is a massive safety risk. I was in serious danger of trampling old ladies in my attempt to get on a bus last night. See? Safety risk.

So. Can you do me a favour, you strange shiny faced man you? Can you NOT strike for dumb-ass reasons again in the near future? You are not warming people to your cause one bit.

Thank you

Tooting

Letter #2

Dear Royal British Legion

I write to congratulate you.

I buy my poppy every year from someone who I assume to be a survivor from the Somme; a poor bent old soul, more wrinkles than flat, and a strange smell of wee about them. It was a tactic that I thought you used to make people think of their Grandpies, and feel bad, and dip their hands in their pockets. And to be fair, it's always worked. You raised £34million last year. That's quite something.

I noticed that, when you launched the Poppy Appeal this year, you said you wanted to raise £90million. I've got to admit, I was sceptical. I mean, it's a charity that gets people's attention and all, but three times last years income? You were going to have to pull something pretty good out of the hat.

And today, you did just that.

Please can I offer my greatest thanks to whichever wonderful person in RBL HQ had the brilliant idea of sending out some lovely uniformed servicemen onto the street? This morning, when I got off the bus, I was greeted by a very tasty young man in American Air Force jacket, and his young, fresh-faced friend from the British Air Force. So I bought a poppy from them. Well, they looked so ... um ... enthusiastic.

Then at lunchtime three young men in army fatigues came at me down the street. Three of them. Together. Well, I've got to tell you, that's a pretty underhand tactic. What choice did I have but to buy another poppy?

And this evening, when I was running for my bus, I ran full tilt into a Queens Guard. There he was, poppy's on a string 'round his neck, and a bucket in one hand. Bearskin and everything. Well, he looked so ~~handsome~~ charitable, that I thought I'd better buy another poppy from him.

So I wanted to write and congratulate your PR team for such a simple, yet effective idea. You want to triple your income this year? Well I've now got three poppies. The system's working.

Best wishes

Tooting

Very Exciting

2010-11-01T20:38:00.004Z

Last weekend, my vacuum cleaner packed in. It worked for five minutes then overheated and cut out. Then it cooled down a bit and worked for five minutes, then overheated and cut out. I halfheartedly wiggled a few bits and shook out a filter thingy and unplugged and plugged in a few bits, and then decided that I wasn't clever enough for it all, and gave in. It had started making a burning smell too, prickling at my paranoia about killing myself alone in my house, and being found a month later, half eaten by cats. (Another blog post for another time, perhaps).

I've not had it that long. Just over a year really. But I suppose in that time it's moved out of a flat and into a house and decorated three rooms, including the fill-and-sand-and-fill-and-sand dining room. Maybe it's been asked to do more than a hoover should in a few short months. Poor old girl.

I was rather fond of her. She was one of those upright ones like Freddie Mercury used, and she was white and shiny and had a whizzy attachment for doing the stairs. My first hoover that was all my own. **sigh**

I was going to take her along to the rubbish dump and have an emotional farewell there, when it dawned on me that someone a bit cleverer than me might be able to get her back up and running. So I listed her on Freecycle, and waited to see if anyone wanted an old broken vacuum.

Within five minutes, I'd had a reply. Igor said he'd have it for his DIYing. "If you think I can be lucky one, please let me know." All yours Igor. You are lucky one. When can you come and get it?

This evening Igor turned up. "I am freecycle man. I come for Electrolux." Wonderful! Come in, come in. "I don't come in, no. I have bicycle here for looking after." WHAT?! You're taking it home on your bike? Igor, I don't think that will work. Igor smiled at me benignly. "Is ok."

I wheeled the "Electrolux" out to the street for him. "Oh yes yes yes." He walked once around it in an approving way. I half expected him to kick the tyres. "Is nice one." How are you going to manage it on your bike though? He carefully pulled off all the bits of hose and nozzle from the outside and tucked them in his panniers, then in a fluid movement he picked it up and flung it over his shoulder, then got on his bike, holding the handle of the hoover in one hand, and his handlebars in the other.

Igor, will you be ok? "Yes, yes. Thank you a lot. It is very exciting. I will fix it and let you know how it is." Very exciting? Well yes, I suppose so Igor. Mind how you go now.

And off he pedalled, slowly, precariously, and a bit nervously on the corner at the end of the road.

My new pull-aroundy vac, with a long elephant-trunk hose, and a pedal that sucks the cable back in is ok, but it's not as nice as the old one. But she's gone off for a new life with Igor, and he thinks that she's very exciting. I'm sure they'll be very happy together.

Local Derby

2010-10-28T10:46:00.002+01:00

Rivalry between Premier football clubs is rife. Chelsea, and all her fans, loathe Arsenal, who loathe Tottenham Hotspurs, who loathe Chelsea. Deep set hatred between waring tribes is part of the spirit of the Beautiful Game.

I don't pretend that it's something I really understand. Being our national game, there's a kind of expectation, I think, that you have a level of passion about it all, but I can't quite shake the feeling that it is, essentially, only a game.

The friction between local teams is the most gritty. Birmingham City v Aston Villa. Newcastle v Sunderland. Manchester United v Manchester City. The competition between these teams often frames the spirit of a whole city. You're either one or the other, bit rarely neither, and never both. Pubs are given over to one side or the other, and woe-betide anyone who fecklessly crosses the line. It's a deeply ingrained and passionate competition.

Liverpool city centre has seen something of a transformation in the last couple of years, culminating in the opening off a large and swanky new shopping centre called Liverpool One. It's typical of big city centre retail developments of the last few years; a big glass roofed beastie full of the same high street retailers that are in every other city centre development in the country.

But this week we got wind of a new tenant there. Everton FC have opened their official club store in the centre, selling everything from pencils to limited edition, framed, signed shirts. A sea of blue and white.

And the shop name?

Everton Two.

That's right. The official Everton club store has the address Everton Two, Liverpool One.

And so the rivalry goes on ...

A Little Bit Mills McCartney

2010-10-24T23:14:00.002+01:00

Seeing the Lovely Lucy mid-week is a rare luxury. On Thursday she had a meeting in London in the morning, so we planned an impromptu late lunch.

When we got to the restaurant, it was busy. A hurrying waiter said they'd lay us a table, so we stood and nattered until, out the corner of my eye, I saw a movement. Our waiter was trying to draw our attention to the table that had been laid for us, using the unconventional technique of jumping up and down and waving his hands in the air.

He was about 5ft 8 tall, and about the same around his middle, bald, and camper than a Bank Holiday at Butlins. He cooed and oohed and aghed at us, and made us feel like his new best friends. When Lucy said that she'd just have a glass of water, he rolled his eyes at me. "Is she always this boring?" he teased, in his soft Scottish purr. "I'm afraid so," I confirmed. We ordered and off he skipped to the kitchen.

So our food came, we ate, we chattered, set the world to rights, and from time to time our waiter came to check we were ok, and we were. He struck the balance between attentive and laid back that suited our mood, and it was all good. When we'd finished our meal, he asked if we wanted coffees, then winked at us pointedly and said they'd be on the house. He told us he'd only worked there a week, and whilst he was at the Gaggia, we speculated on whether he'd still be there in a week's time.

Whilst we were sorting out the bill, Lucy got up to go to the loo. There was one just near where we were sitting, and she made a b-line for it, but there was a kerfuffle at the door. Our waiter, another waiter and Lucy ended up doing a little dance at the door, "after you," "no, no, I insist, after you." After she'd closed the door, the other waiter rounded on ours. "Don't let customers use that toilet. It's a disabled toilet for disabled people. The customer toilets are downstairs." Our waiter waited until the other guy's back was turned, then rolled his eyes at me. When Lucy came back she apologised for causing a fracas.

So there we were, pulling on our coats, and draining our cups, when suddenly our man was back by our side, leaning over our table in a conspiratorial way. "I've just told him, 'you can't talk to that lady like that, you don't know anything about her. You can't talk to her like that.' And then I said to him, 'you see, she's only got the one leg.' So now, when you leave, you've got to limp a bit so he knows."

Limp a bit?! We were both laughing so hard we could hardly stand! I think we might have slightly over-egged our part.

A break for freedom.

2010-10-18T23:20:00.003+01:00

This morning, started with the screeching of tyres and the honking of a horn.

It's an alarming way to start a Monday morning.

At first I couldn't see what had caused the snarl up in the traffic, or work out where the horns were coming from, but a dog suddenly appeared on the pavement in front of me, lollopping around in a clueless kind of a way, and the traffic started moving, so I assumed he'd been causing a fray.

He fell in alongside a woman ahead of me, trotting at her heel, running a few steps ahead, hanging back to sniff at something. She dropped a hand to run over his head and he kept pace with her. They appeared to be a happy duo, and together they rounded the corner at the top of the road at the station.

Thirty seconds later I rounded the same corner. Up ahead, on the bridge, was the back view of the woman, but no sign of her dog. I assumed he'd gone on ahead, lured by a particularly tempting whiff.

But no! I stopped at the newsstand at the station entrance, and there was our mutt, sniffing around behind the counter, and nudging the stallholder in the hopes of a scratch behind the ear. The stallholder obliged, simultaneously running his hand around the dog's neck, looking for a collar or name tag, but there were no clues. Mutt took off into the station, ducking under the ticket barrier, in a blatant flaunting of the rules and he was away.

Down on the platform, confusion reigned. "That was a dog!" "What's a dog doing here?" "Who does he belong to?" He wove between the morning commuters, sniffing here, nuzzling there, begging for scraps and attention. All the time the trail was wagging, the tongue was lolling, and he skipped along, keeping just ahead of me.

Then things got a bit hairy. He kept right on off the end of the platform. Where it sloped down at the end to the train tracks, he just kept trucking, sniffing exploring. The crowd got restless.

A combination of quick thinking and lunchbox shaking on the part of one commuter lured him back onto the platform, whereupon he trotted along to my side, looked at me in a happily feckless way, turned himself around, and say on my feet.

Oh.

Erm.

Dog?

Would you mind ...?

No?

OK then.

I scratched him behind the ears and he leaned in. His tail was still drumming the platform, and he wasn't showing signs of moving. This was a dog who was comfortable, thank you very much. Another girl just along the platform watched on, then set off. "I'll go and get one of the men from the ticket office."

So I kept scratching his head and talking to him, and hoping that he wouldn't bolt when the train came. Then the train came and I realised that I wanted to bolt. That was my train!! My new furry friend and I watched the train pull in and watched the train pull out.

So STILL I kept scratching his head.

Suddenly a man was by my side; one of the ticket office men. "You again?" he asked, looking at the dog in mock frustration. He looked to me, "we'll take it from here. Thanks," and he clocked his fingers. The dog hopped up, stretched, and wandered off with the station guard.

And that's as much as I know.

Frustrating, isn't it, to not know what happened next? Well that's how I've spent my day, so I thought I'd share the frustration with you all too.

Absenteeism

2010-10-12T23:12:00.002+01:00

Hello.

I've been away for a while.

Well the thing is, I was quite busy, and a week went by without a post, then I missed a "this weekend ...", then I thought that when I wrote a post it had to be really good to make up for so much radio silence, but I was still busy, and then writing anything seemed a lot like hard work, which isn't really the point is it? So in short, I haven't blogged for ages because I just haven't. I have lost my blogging mo-jo. (My "blo-jo"?)

But today I did something slightly (very) embarrassing, and it struck me that in the old days (like, a month ago) I'd have blogged about it. So I thought I would ...

So. I had a meeting in Tooting this evening in a part business, part pleasure, part busy-body way, at 6:30pm. That kind of meant leaving work at about 5:45pm. I actually left work at 6:15pm. Woopsa! So I ran, and I ran, and I ran, and I ran, and I got on the Tube. Maybe it was that I was running late and was flustered that discombobulated me.

These days I don't often travel on the Tube. I tend to be all about the overground trains. Perhaps it was this unfamiliarity that discombobulated me.

Then when the train came in, it was rammed. Proper heaving. Maybe it was the general level of over crowding that discombobulated me.

Maybe I wasn't discombobulated at all. Maybe I have a bit of Tourettes.

So. There I was. Out of breath, and wedged in the middle of a very squished train carriage. As the doors closed, and the train set off down the tunnel, the draft that runs through each carriage picked up a scent. On the breeze there was the unmistakable aroma of fried food. And I acknowledged this fact by raising my head, raising my voice, and saying loudly, clearly, and with fine voice projection, "I CAN SMELL CHIPS!"

Fifty pairs of eyes turned on me for a second, then turned to the floor. Fifty people stifled sniggers. Fifty people said nothing. And one person (me) pretended to have said, or heard nothing.

This Weekend (19) ...

2010-09-19T23:32:00.002+01:00

... has been a combination of busy, frantic, organised, successful, confusing, nerve-wracking, indulgent, quirky and chilled out. Let me explain ...

1) On Thursday evening, I went home for a thrilling night of ... counting. Open House is now only a fortnight away (eek!) and I had 10,000 leaflets delivered last week for distribution. They were to go to 77 artists exhibiting in 29 houses, plus 48 cafes, bars and shops around the area, plus some spares. Nothing for it but to count them. All of them. All 10,000. **sigh** So I had a rock and roll night with cardboard boxes, rubber bands, post it notes and the ability to count to 100. Yawnarama!

2) Friday morning saw the end to the counting (I went to bed on Thursday night at 2am, when I’d lost the ability to remember what came after 79). Then I set out to start trying to smooth talk the local businesses into putting some out on display for us. It’s interesting to see which businesses want to support local events and which don’t. One cafe – a regular hang out for us arty sorts, point blank refused. I think it’s possible that they’ve just lost 77 regulars ...!

3) Friday evening then was the organised bit. One person came to a meeting from each of the 29 houses, to collect their leaflets. They’d to give me £4 for each artist exhibiting in their house, collect 100 leaflets per artist, collect instructions for the competition (slightly different for each house), know where they’re delivering leaflets, and collect a bunch of pink balloons. Sound simple? You clearly have never tried to herd artists. They are all, to a man, deliciously lovely people, but my word, are they hard to direct! But we did it! Only two no-shows, which I think is pretty good going. Even if it did leave me with a pocket full of pound coins, and a surfeit of pink balloons ...

4) Then I set out to drive to Mother and Father Tooting's place in Kent. All going well, until roadworks forced me off the motorway one junction early, then an accident wouldn’t let me back on, so at beddie-byes time, I was still bowling around the greater Maidstone area (never good ...) hoping for a familiar looking road sign. I made it out in the end, tired, hungry, emotional, and in desperate need of a wee.

5) Saturday morning. This was the nerve wracking bit. As regular readers will know, I own, but rarely drive, a Nissan Figaro. Style-wise, they are, to my simple mind, the most beautiful cars on the road. They reek of 1950’s style, Japanese quirkiness, and urban nippiness. But mine was a money pit. I’m not going to tell you what it’s cost me in repairs in the last eighteen months, but it comfortably runs to four figures, and is enough to make me well up a bit. On Saturday I took it to a used car lot near my parents, haggled with a nice man / foolish soul, and agreed a price to trade the old girl in for a five year old Polo. It’s not glamorous. It’s not sexy. But it was the right move, and it was a good deal. So why did it feel like such a massive decision to make? Sitting in the car deciding that I'd do it felt like a big moment. And the second I walked out of the garage, having signed the papers, it felt like the most obvious thing in the world. I pick up the new motor on Friday. It's a boy, I'm sure, and he will be needing a name. Any ideas?

6) The rest of the day was lost to sighs of relief, and pottering jobs. Nice. It’s been such a long time since I had time to just mooch about that it was nice to enjoy a bit of not-very-much with Mother Tooting for a while.

7) On Saturday night, they took me for dinner to a pub that is new to them, but clearly not a new place. Kent is peppered with these places. Clap-board pubs that look tiny on the outside, but extend to three or four cosy, fire-warmed rooms on the inside; all low beams and mis-matched furniture. This one is on the bank of a tributary of the River Swale in a teeny village called Oare, and it's called The Three Mariners. If you're in the East Kent area, go there. You'll need to book - it was rammed last night. Prosciutto and figs, slow roasted pork, and a cheeseboard to finish. Are you drooling? You really should be. It was deeeeeeeelicious!

8) This morning we went to a car boot sale. We Tootings like a car book sale. Father likes books and old vinyl long players, Mother likes old china, and I like all of this, and anything else that looks bargainous. But this is a car boot sale with a difference. Every two years, the Stately Homes of Kent are invited to come together to sell the family silver, and it's great. They all turn up with their detritus in a horsebox, and spend the day in their Barbour jackets and Hunter wellies saying things like, "darling, would you mind awfully if I asked five pahnds?" There's none of your usual car boot rubbish - not a cafetiere or a foot spa in sight - but you can't move for ski-boots, golf clubs, and tureens. Just marvellous. The parents bought a couple of casseroles and I bought a present for a some-time reader of this blog, so Mum's the word!

9) This afternoon was chilled out Sunday afternoon stuff. Speaks on the phone with family, films on Channel 4, jewellery making, tea drinking, and breezy conversation, then dinner and a lift to the station, with cries of, "see you next week!". I decided that I'd leave the Fig in Kent for the week, rather than drive it home and back again. Knowing my luck I'd crash or breakdown now, and have some big explaining to do at the garage. Not worth the risk so the train home for me. Quite nice to know that I've an excuse to pop back next weekend when I pick up the motor, albeit that it'll be a flying visit.

10) What a journey home though! Works on the line, so a replacement bus through the narrow streets of Medway, then a slow train the rest of the way, which meant I just missed my connection, so in total my journey from the family seat to Tooting Towers took a whopping three hours. Craziness. Then I came upon TWO fire-engines at the end of my road on my way from the station. Eeeek! Fortunately nothing to do with me or my neighbours, but something that looked a lot like a false alarm at an office around the corner. What a shame that firemen in Tooting aren't any too reminiscent of Backdraft ...!

Street Life

2010-09-15T23:05:00.002+01:00

Our office is on a pretty quiet mews.

There are offices and back entrances to shops along it, but, until you get to our end, there's not much life. After our office, there's a fancy restaurant, a pub, and an EAT sandwich place. That's it. It's pretty tranquil on our little lane usually.

So, imagine our intrigue when, just before we left the office this evening, we heard a lot of shouting from the street. There were only three of us left for the evening, and we were mulling over whether to go to the pub for a quick one, or just head home. Suddenly the three of us were bolting across the floor to push our noses against the front windows.

On the street there were three tramps; two men and a woman. The men were brawling - properly going at one another, and the woman was hopping around behind them shouting eloquent things like, "fuck off you fucker!" Naturally, we were gripped.

The row, it seems, was over a sack of leftover EAT sandwiches. There were twenty or so in the bag that the shop staff had put our for the rubbish, and one of the men and the woman had picked up the lot. This, it seems, does not adhere to the rules. The done thing is to take one item each and leave the rest for the next people to come along. Mr Tramp II came along in time to see them make off with the goods, and took issue.

So the three of them were tearing pieces off one another in the street, and, in the process, kicking over the sack of sandwiches. One man ripped the sleeve off the shirt of the other. "You bastard! That's my only shirt!" "No it's not! You're not even really homeless! Give me the food!" (Lady Tramp skitters around them shouting, "kill him! Kill him!") The Sleeveless Tramp thumped the other in the face. One bloody nose. The Bloody Tramp looked at the blood dripping down his front and thumped back. Two bloody noses.

"Kill him! Hit him harder! He's hardly bleeding!"
"Give me the food!"
"You tore my shirt!"

Brilliant!

We cast our eyes around. Every window along the mews had people hanging out of it, gawping with the same obvious glee that we were.

Lady Tramp looked up and saw, presumably, a hundred faces pushed to the glass. "You can all fuck off too!" She spun around, shaking her fists at the buildings around her, and tipped backwards in the process. Somewhere above us, someone cheered.

A man appeared, walking towards them slowly, holding a role of kitchen role. He's the guy who works in EAT. "There's more sandwiches. Calm down," and he handed the two bleeding men handfuls of kitchen role to stem the flow. Standing between them, in his new role as Peace Keeper, he rotated slowly, as they sidled around one another, keeping them both at arms length.

"Kill him too! Get him!" the woman shouted. They both lunged. EAT Man dived. They hit one another, and immediately got one another in headlocks. Stalemate.

Another man entered the fray. A fourth tramp shuffled in from stage right. He stopped six feet back from the interlocking tramps and stopped. Everyone froze and stared at him. A silence filled the air. New Tramp looked from the men, to the EAT Man, to the woman, to the sandwiches, and back again. After a short pause, he walked past them, bent down, picked up two sandwiches, and walked on. A hundred pairs of eyes watched him go, and once he was safely out of harms way, a new cry went up.

"We're more homeless than you!" They were off again.

By now there were bits of clothing, clumps of hair, pieces of sandwich, littering the street, and still the fight went on. EAT Man tried to get between them and break up the fight. Tramp Woman egged them on. Every office worker on the block peered out the window. A crowd gathered outside the pub.

Then the police turned up. The crowd shuffled with dissatisfaction. Someone on the opposite side of the road booed. Bloody Tramp took off. He just turned on his heel and ran. The crowd cheered. The police looked on, dumbstruck. Woman Tramp shouted after him, "you're not that fucking hungry then, are you?"

And then it all quietened down. An ambulance arrived and mopped everyone up and the police moved the crowd along. EAT Man bagged up the now-trampled sandwiches and threw the bag back with the rubbish. And we went for a pint, safe in the knowledge that we wouldn't have that exciting a Wednesday night again for a long time.

The Commuter

2010-09-09T21:54:00.002+01:00

Today, whilst I waited at Victoria for my train, I watched my fellow commuters.

The businessman rushes. He has stayed in the office until the last second, then rushed for the train, making his lateness everyone else's problem. No-one understands the day he's had, or the pressure that he's under. His pinstripe suit has the slackness of a day's wear, and his trousers ride up when he runs to reveal threadbare socks. But he is, in his world, a Very Important Person.

The business woman, a rarer breed, is more equipped for the job. She has paired her pinstripe, idiosyncratically, with trainers so that she can run for her train to greater effect. But then she is burdened with a capacious handbag which slows her down.

Then there is the casual businessman, less sharp, less panicked, and less time-sensitive. He's in the uniform of the freelance consultant - beige slacks, blazer, brown brogues and a pastel coloured shirt. He's left himself time to pick up an Evening Standard and an M&S meal deal ("it's the bottle of Rioja that makes it such excellent value.") and strolls to the platform whilst looking over the day's headlines.

The IT consultant is in his 30's but his wardrobe belongs to a man ten year's younger. Again, there's a uniform - jeans from one of a handful of on-trend brands, blue checked shirt, and earphones connected to an invisible gadget, like some life-supporting battery-pack. He has planned his journey; forty-five seconds to cross the concourse, thirty to get to the second door of the third carriage of the train on platform nine. No need to rush. No time to spare. The system works.

The shoppers rush, but ineffectually. Come to The Big Smoke for a day's hardcore retail therapy, and to flex the husband's credit card in John Lewis, by home-time the ladies of the commuter-belt have remembered that the streets are not, in fact, paved with gold, but with other crazed shoppers. The home-time dash is left too late, by people who forget why it's called a "rush hour", and the plentiful bags make the process of finding the cheap-day return in the inside pocket of the Radley handbag a bit troublesome. They move in gaggles, these women. "Oh DO come along Julia! We'll miss the 6:42 and I'll not have time to hide the shopping before Gerald is home from the office!"

The tourists gaze, without comprehension, at the lists of station names on the board, their tank-sized suitcases sprawling across the concourse. Their dithering is the nightmare of their fellow traveller. Their unpredictability is ... well ... unpredictable, and The Commuter can't cope with any kind of break from the system. And the cases, rucksack, clinking bags of duty-free and Alps of Toblerone make them big space users, which is never popular with the, "can you move down inside the carriage," brigade.

The students loaf around in herds. They don't rush. They expect the timetable to wait for them. They scuff across the station, a Greggs pasty in one hand, and their parents hopes and dreams in the other. They drift between the other commuters, spreading their waves of ambivalence through the crowd. Their too-big or too-small clothes look like they've landed on the wrong person, and they appear to have no real sense of urgency, but they move in the right direction almost instinctively.

Young men shout into mobile phones, "we drank, like, six pints! Man, we were wasted!". Middle aged women mutter into theirs, "I'll pick something up on my way home for dinner." Latecomers run, dawdlers stroll, regulars stride, and day trippers shuffle. Middle aged men in expensive suits push and shove, and teenaged boys in slouchy jeans and offensive t-shirts say, "excuse me, please." Noses in books, or magazines, or tabloids, or broadsheets. Fiddling with phones or MP3 players. Eating, drinking, snapping gum.

We're all just commuters.

The Party's Over

2010-09-07T18:45:00.003+01:00

First full day home from a glorious weekend away, and it's back to earth with a bump.

Baby Amie is the cutest little button you ever did see. She was a bit off colour last week, but, being keen to see them all, we told her slightly nervous mother that they should come anyway. Amie was ok in herself. Just a wee bit ... y'know ... pukey from time to time.

And inevitably, being a cutie, the crafty little minx lured us into lavishing her with cuddles and games and hand holds all weekend.

On balance, we shouldn't be surprised at the results. Her father was sick by Saturday morning, and laid up all weekend. But Baby Amie kept trucking. By Monday morning, hours after the departure of Amie and her family, Birthday Girl Lorraine was sick, and a little after they set off for home, her Baby Rachel was struck down too. Rotten luck, no? But Baby Amie kept trucking.

This morning, I woke up very early, and knew that all was not well. I was right. It was not. So I've spent the day in my jarmas, moving between the sofa and my bed. Baby Amie is, as I understand it, still trucking.

Checking in with the Birthday Girl Lorraine I discovered that Mr Birthday Girl was also sick, and that they'd learned that the first husband to depart was also laid up. Andy "Buns of Steel" Carter was also out of action, sitting around on his perky little buns all day.

So, is anyone keeping track? That's eight out of thirteen people that one little girl has put out of action. Not bad going for one cute little button, don't you think?

This Weekend (18) ...

2010-09-06T22:03:00.019+01:00

This weekend I've been away, and I'm not long back. I've had such a good time with such lovely people (between you and me, they are some of my favourites, but don't tell them, or they'll get cocky) that I feel a bit flat and forlorn to be home again now.

I can't really do it in usual "This Weekend" ten point format, so instead I'll ramble.

So, this weekend, the lovely Lorraine turned 30. She has had the good sense to leave hitting her third decade until a couple of years after us, which (a) makes us jealous, and (b) allows us to drag out the 30th birthday celebrations.

The thing is that, two and three years ago, when we turned 30, most of us were footloose and fancy free. Now our group of ten has become a group of thirteen, with two more on the way, and we're all shackled to our mortgages. On balance, we thought that a weekend away was a better way of celebrating this landmark. And I'm jolly glad that we did!

On Friday, I picked up my hire car and set off for Basingstoke, to collect the cake. All was going to plan until the direction to take the last left before the one-way system, which I missed, catapulting myself into a system of roundabouts, one way streets and dual-carriageways about ten miles long. RATS! After A LOT of driving 'round in circles, I finally got to my destination, and aren't I glad that I did? This little beauty was made for us by the magnificent Hazel of The Purple Cake Company (plug plug plug). The reason for the theme will become apparent ...

And then off I went to Gloucestershire, to this house. What do you think? Grand, ain't it? Well, this is the back view (oh, err ...) because it's nicer than the front view, and I want you to be jealous. Is it working?

Anyway, ten people and three babies sure can eat a lot of food, so no sooner was I there than Simon and I headed straight for the nearest supermarket to stock up. Exhausting! But thank heavens for bob-a-job week! When we got to the check out there was a nice young Boy Scout waiting to help us with our packing, and BOY did he earn his Bob from us! When we were done, I double checked that he'd packed a bottle of gin. "You sound like my parents," he observed. We both laughed at his foolishness for thinking we were so old, then realised that, in truth, we probably were old enough to be his parents. Don't you hate it when reality strikes?

Anyway, over the course of time everyone assembled and we got to lavish our birthday girl with presents. You want to see what our girl's husband bought her? Jimmy Choos. JIMMY CHOOS!! Is Simon a good husband, or is Simon a good husband? (And now you know why the theme on the cake!)

And then it was time to get stuck into the booze. And pizza. We bought a lot of pizza. What can I tell you. I'm a domestic goddess.

Saturday was a family day so we all went to a farm park and showed the babies some cows ("Moooo," said Baby Rachel) and sheep, ("Moooo," said Baby Rachel) and pigs, ("Moooo," said Baby Rachel ...). It was pretty cool really. This guy was my fave. Don't you think that he looks kind of majestic? He was a proud and dignified goat ... until he ate the whole bag of goat food, including the bag. Not so dignified with a lump of paper hanging out of his mouth.

I left the kiddies to it to head back to the ranch and get a start on dinner. I don't often get the chance for mass catering, so I've been looking forward to getting stuck into the catering-sized pots of cream, and double sized sacks of potatoes. It was kind of tiring, but you know what? It was fun! People drifted in and out of the kitchen all evening and did the odd job here or there, and chatted to me whilst I stirred things and poured me drinks when I looked thirsty, and it was fun!

And whilst I was at the stove, look what Ruth and the boys were doing in the dining room! Balloons, streamers, dingly-dangly number 30s, glitter and sequins, and ten napkins folded into ten different shapes. Those boys are full of surprises!

It was fun! It was lovely to sit around and eat and laugh and gossip and laugh at Andy's hair, just like the old days. And, with a certain inevitability, there was booze.

And then we had a racing night ... which some people took more seriously than others ...

So yesterday was a proper old fashioned Sunday. We loafed and slouched and pottered and did not very much, before eating the most gi-ga-nor-mous Sunday roast, which the booze of the night before ensured everyone inhaled, without allowing those roast spuds to touch the side!

And then people started to drift away. Angela and Mark headed back to their new house and shortly after Ruth and Adrian headed west with little Baby Amie, and in the mean time the rest of us loafed some more, then, when the time was right, we hit the kitchen and ate every morsel of food that was left in the house. Honestly. You'd think those people had never seen food!

So that was it. The weekend. All fabulous fun, and super chilled out, and, as ever, lovely to see them all. And best of all ... we're planning to do it all again next year!

This Weekend (17) ...

2010-08-30T23:25:00.002+01:00

This weekend was a looooooong weekend. Bliss! And here's the killer! NEXT weekend will be a long weekend too! A girl could get used to the three day working week! But anyway, here's this week's news.

1) Thursday night. No pub quiz. I had a date with an actual boy instead. I'm not going to tell you about it. I'm being enigmatic. There's a first time for everything ...

2) Friday morning I hit the supermarket. I'm making an extra special really real effort to buy British where possible, and avoid import unless it's essential. Most of the time it's pretty easy, and I've been buying 'licious food. But tell me, why, in August, is Mr Sainsbury IMPORTING tomatoes from the Netherlands? Grrr! I feel a letter coming on.

3) The local Artists' Open House event is building a head of steam. Well it is in my house, anyway. I and another lady were meant to be co-ordinating the trail around the 29 houses that will form the Tooting trail, but she seems to have absconded, so here I am ... The build up and planning is going to be something of a running theme in posts for the next month, I think. (Early plug ... if anyone's in the Tooting area on 2/3 Oct or 9/10 October, then come and see us! You can see the brochure for the borough here, and keep popping back for more propaganda!) Anyway, it's with this in mind that I now have 300 pink balloons in my dining room. Deflated, unfortunately, but don't let that stand in the way of a good mental image.

4) On Friday night, it was my turn to host our girls Making Night. The five of us had a good old natter whilst we knitted, stitched, beaded, cut card and drank wine. We set the world to rights. It was all good.

5) The Lovely Amelia's youngest came to Making Night with her, and, in spite of his sugar high caused by playing something called The Doughnut Game (you can imagine ...) at holiday club, he flaked out in the spare room in no time. On Saturday morning he and I played out in the car with the top down, went to the park, ate Percy Pigs, and played Graffiti Ball on the iPhone. I'm not sure it was educational, but it was fun.

6) Do you know, I've no idea what I did on Saturday afternoon. I'm sitting here scratching my head, and nothing comes to mind. If I spent it with you, I apologise. The early onset dementia is, unfortunately, kicking in. Now where was I ...?

7) Sunday was to be a jewelling day. All my spare time at the moment is spent planning Open House, but I need to spend a little time making things that I can sell myself too. At the moment, I have about three things to sell. So I made a stack of bracelets and planned a few more and had a few ideas that I scribbled on a list. I'm not in control yet, but I can now see that I could be in control, if I could only concentrate long enough.

8) Then on Sunday evening, The Lovely Robbo (TLR, hereafter) came to visit. He is an old pal from university days, who did live just up the road, but then was made redundant and rather irritatingly got a new job in Newcastle. I'm still very resentful. But he was in town for a few days and I got to see him for the first time in aaa-aaa-aaa-ges. We went out for a bite to eat and nattered about all the things we've not nattered about for yonks.

9) Today was an uncharacteristically mild bank holiday Monday. Tradition has it that it rains on a bank holiday usually, so it made a nice change. TLR and I had bacon sandwiches the size of our heads for breakfast, then pootled along to Abbey Mills, a craft market near here built in ... you guessed it ... old mill buildings. We wandered along the river to Morden Hall Park, which is one of my favourite places in London. It's the most lovely park, beautifully kept by those nice people at The National Trust, and it's in such an unlikely place, that it's doubly lovely. TLR was impressed that somewhere so lovely had been right on his doorstep and he'd never known it was there. Well ... I don't share secrets like that with just anyone ...

10) Then after TLR left, I dropped some empty jars to a friend for her blackberry jam, made some cakes to take to the office tomorrow, wrote the event listings for Open House (see ... it's taking over my life), wrote a begging letter to all local artists asking them for prize donations for a competition, planned menus for next weekend's Big Weekend Away, made dinner, made lunch for tomorrow, and now, written a blog post. So now, I think it's time for beddy bies. G'night!

I am the Key Master

2010-08-29T15:11:00.003+01:00

(Quick houskeeping note: "This Weekend ..." will be posted tomorrow. It's a bank holiday weekend her in Blighty, so we are all lounging by rivers in the sun drinking Pimms for another day yet...)

So, there I was yesterday afternoon, pottering around at home, and generally dodging sitting down and making jewellery for the forthcoming Open House event, when my shuffling took me into the garden.

I pulled up a few weeds, dead-headed a few flowers, and noticed that there was a damned sight more that needed doing that I couldn't quite pluck up the enthusiasm for, when I noticed something on my garden table.

There, on the glass, not in the middle, but safely away from the edge, was a key. Not a nice shiny new key, or even a very large key, but a key nevertheless. It's not rusty, but it's well weathered and if there ever were any discerning features, they have long since been worn away. It's the simplest key that a key can be, and still be a key.

But where did it come from?

My house in the middle of a terrace of about 20 houses. There's no back alley, so the only way into my garden is either through the house, or over ten fences in either direction. The back wall is the 20 ft high school wall. No-one's coming over that baby. So if I didn't put the key there (and I didn't) then who did? Was it flung over a few fences or the school wall? Did a passing bird of fox drop it from their more appetising haul?

Or was it left there by fairies ...?!

And what does it open? It's not for anything in my garden. There are no doors or gates or ins or outs. Not that I've noticed so far, anyway. I've mentioned it to Mother Tooting, who thinks I should leave it, in the hopes that it's joined by a cake that is iced with the words, "Eat Me", or maybe a White Rabbit in a waistcoat. My neighbour Suzanne thinks that it's almost certainly the key to a secret garden.

Either option seems likely to me.

So in the mean time, I've left it on the table. I think that it should stay there, don't you? Maybe someone's lost it and will come looking. Or maybe one day a tantalising door will spring up to go with it. Or maybe it will grow into a key tree right there in my back yard.

Meanwhile, if anyone thinks that their keyring looks a bit light, do let me know.

Lost in Translation

2010-08-23T22:04:00.003+01:00

Question: What do the following phrases have in common?

- I get to see very good article.
- To visit the hello, great blog to help you promote a culture.
- Time is shaping the lives of the material.
- To help fight popular, go, go, go.
- Happy to enjoy the results of the work process.
- Time is the life of the soul.
- The best gift in life is to own a slice of pie.
- Death is sad, but even more sad to live unhappy.

Answer: They are all translations of the Chinese comments posted on my blog in the last month.

Now, I hate to sound picky. A comment IS a comment, after all. And it's nice to embrace all cultures. And I like a bit of foreign as much as the next person.

But PLEEEEASE, Mr China-spam, stop commenting on my blog in Chinese!!!

That is all .

Anecdotal Evidence

2010-08-20T21:40:00.009+01:00

In my line of work, part of the remit is to collect evidence of deals done on other property similar to ours. We call around other agents and get them to talk us through what they've done, how they've done it, why they've done it, and what they got out of it.

Most of the time this is sufficient, but sometimes things turn nasty* and we have to get mean. And then there are quite strict guidelines on what is good information and what is bad information.

Good information is what you get when someone knows all about a deal and can fill all the details into a schedule, chapter and verse, add it all up, explain it all, sign it and seal it in blood. We like that. It makes us happy. Bad information is when some bloke down the pub says, "between you and me, I heard that shop x was leased to retailer y and they paid a million pounds for it! Of course, I might have misheard ..." We don't like that. It makes us anxious. It's known as "anecdotal evidence."

It strikes me that the same boundaries could be applied to all intel. When you are given information (by which I mean "gossip") you should ask for some kind of authority. The giver of the gossip should have all the information to hand, be able to analyse what they have heard, write it down, and sign it. Anything less should not pass for good gossip. Anecdotal evidence should be taken with a pinch of salt.

I'll give you an example from the Family Tooting.

Christmas of, I think, 2004, was the last that Granny Tooting spent with our side of the family.

She was a lady who, in her time, had enjoyed a gin and a fag. Actually, at one point, Granny Tooting was enjoying a litre of gin a week, and 40 John Player Special a day. God love her, she was pickled. She'd lived the Ex-Pat life, travelling the world with my Grandfather, in New Zealand, Mexico, India, Peru and Trinidad, and probably others that her booze-addled brain couldn't remember, staying in each country for a few years, before coming home long enough to pat her son (raised largely by his Aunt) on the head, and leave again. In each country they soaked up the local delicacies, largely orally, in liquid form, on the rocks. Granny was quite the girl.

My father's family was from a small village in the Dulais valley in South Wales, and Granny would have been in her twenties in the 40s. Life was staid and sensible then. People didn't do frivolous things. Excitement was rationed. So Granny married Grandad in the mid-40s, and he was considered to be a catch because he'd trained as an engineer in mines, and would earn a good trade. That she was to turn into a mildly alcoholic old lady at his hand wouldn't have occurred to anyone. He was a Good Man and that was what counted.

So, against that backdrop, picture this scene. Post Christmas, pre New Year 2004. The Tootings have finished their dinner, cleaned up, and are sitting in the living room watching seasonal TV specials. Celebrity Mastermind comes on the telly and no-one can muster the enthusiasm to change the channel, so we start watching. An ex-soap actor steps forward, and sits in the black leather chair. Chosen specialist subject ... the life and films of Richard Burton. Naturally we play along, despite only knowing a handful of answers between us. End of round, and there's a pause.

"I could have married Richard Burton when I was a girl," pipes up Granny.

Another pause. Four Tootings gawp at her open mouthed whilst we churn this information. About the right age. One valley over. The could, very conceivably, have been at the same dance hall at the same time. Father Tooting lets his head drop into his hand and sighs.

"Dada [her father] didn't approve though. Said he'd never amount to much. Not like your father," she nods her head towards Father Tooting. "He was an engineer. He was really going places." She picked up the empty gin and tonic glass and stared hopefully into the bottom. No-one said a word.

Is it true? Who knows. There's no-one left to ask who would remember, and even if there was, they mightn't say. So I guess it has to be disregarded as anecdotal evidence.

All I do know is this. My Granny could have been Elizabeth Taylor!

The Tooting Grandparents

*"When Surveyors Turn Nasty" will TOTALLY be the title of the film of my life. It will be a deep psychological thriller. I will be played by Angelina Jolie who will survey her socks off!

Familiarity Breeds Contempt

2010-08-19T20:23:00.003+01:00

I have been reminded that I promised an internet dating update.

First though, an anecdote ...

When I was a student there was a lad on our course called Ray. He came from Dudley. For those not of these shores, Dudley is on the edge of Birmingham, and has a particular sort of an accent. Ray sounded like he came from Dudley. Ray also lived in my hall of residence. Consequently, I saw a lot of Ray.

This was not a good thing. He was somehow distant and clingy at the same time. Quiet, but also probing. He was a bit creepy. Sometimes you'd be happily sitting there, having your dinner with your friends, and when you looked up you'd find him standing there at the end of the table watching you, without casting a shadow, and with no-one being aware just how long he'd been there. Similarly, in lectures, you'd sit down next to an empty seat, and at some point you'd notice he was sitting in it. But how long had be been there? It was impossible to say. He would arrive, stealth like, next to you. It was, to say the least, unsettling.

And then he'd kind of stick. He'd be there, just a little bit too close for comfort, and not saying anything, but looking like he wanted to, for long enough that you started trying to think of ways of saying, "did you want something?" without being rude. Sometimes we'd just say, "did you want something?" and to hell with sounding rude!

On one occasion my parents had brought me back to uni after the holidays and were helping me to unpack and get straight, which is no mean feat in a small room that you have to sleep, study, sometimes eat, and wash in, when there are three grown people, and lots of boxes around. Ray came to the door. He didn't say anything. Moving imperceptibly slowly, he glided into the room until he was sitting on the desk and we had to keep asking him to move. Still he said nothing. Everyone else, feeling slightly uncomfortable, also said nothing. In the end, I asked him to leave. I told him that there wasn't room for another body in the room, especially one that wasn't helping, and that I wanted to enjoy the last bit of time with my parents before they left. Mute, he slithered out of the room, and later told a mutual friend how he'd met and had a nice chat with my parents.

A couple of his mates were quite popular lads. You know the sort that can flirt outrageously with you and say borderline cheeky things, and get away with it? Well Ray would, on occasion, try to emulate this. He must have seen that the cheekiness won favour, and think he'd give it a go. But being the character that he was, he couldn't get away with it, and just ended up being rude.

All in all, not a popular boy. He was unceremoniously dropped after graduation, and, whilst he'd crop up from time to time for the first few years, he diappeared after a while, and no-one knows what he's up to now. Vanished into obscurity.

Why do I mention this now?

Well. On Tuesday I had a date with an internet boy. Because I'm optimistically thinking there'll be other dates, I'll call him Boy 1. We've been in touch for a couple of weeks, swapped a few of the ridiculous prescribed Q&A things that the website enforces and been emailing a bit. I had a hunch that he was a bit nerdy, but he asked me if I wanted to meet, and you know how it is. A girl's gotta eat!

We had a nice time. Couple of drinks, then a bit of dinner. And the conversation flowed all night about all sorts, so there were no awkward icy moments. He seemed ... y'know ... nice.

Why the reticence?

He reminded me of Ray. Nothing that I can quite put my finger on. Maybe hint of an accent? Maybe the shape of the specs? Maybe the colour of his hair? But something. There was definitely something of the Raymond about him. And it was the biggest turn off since Henry VIII said, "a daughter, you say?"

Boy 1 will not see Date 2. Irrational, but I just can't do it.

So let's see what Boy 2 has to offer!

This Weekend (17) ...

2010-08-16T14:56:00.003+01:00

Look at me, bowling seamlessly from one weekend to the next! My life is a sea of time off, punctuated by small doses of working for a living. Tra la la! Let me haul myself from my semi-reclined position to tell you about my weekend ...

1) Pub quiz. There is a rule that there are always two answers the same. In the film round, a sound track was played. "Dur-dur... dur-dur ..." All teams but one quickly wrote, "Jaws," on the answer sheet. The team of teenaged boys at the back of the room, dutifully in attendance every week, and always bottom of the table, were heard to mutter, "it sounds like Jaws, but it might be a trick question," prompting much merriment. Two questions later, the question master read a film quote, "This was no boat accident!" he looked pointedly at the boys and asked, "do you STILL think that was a trick question?" They looked at him blankly, but after A LOT of prompting, were persuaded to write down, "Jaws" again, giving them the much sought after double answer. There was a long pause. "That means that two of our three "Cubas" ain't right." The question master had to leave the room whilst he mopped tears of mirth from his eyes.

2) I've had the German girl (who I thought was Swiss) staying again for a few days last week with her boyfriend. On Friday morning whilst they had their breakfast, I played tour guide, giving them hot tips for cafes and shops in Brighton, then train and ferry links to the Isle of Wight, and a list of must-see attractions once there. It was fun to scour the map for ideas, and I was sad, and a bit jealous, to send them off to enjoy a couple of days of sight-seeing. It was bliss, though, to enjoy those first few minutes of having the house back to myself when they left. Shhhhhhhh ...!

3) Crafting morning in Tooting Mansions. I have some pressed flowers that I wanted to mount into greetings cards, but I was rushing so the little window that I cut in the card was wonky one way, then wonky the other, then a bit skew-wiff. After a full morning's cutting and sticking and making, I managed to make only three cards! I give in!

4) The lovely Concetta came 'round with her equally lovely children on Friday afternoon. Whilst the very grown up I, aged 4, solemnly drew the bunk beds she'd like in her room, T, aged three, flirted outrageously, "you've got lovely hair," "you've got a really nice name," and "I really like your t-shirt" being amongst his best attempts to win favour, all of which worked a treat! What can I tell you? I'm a sucker for a charming young man! In turn, I fed him on vast quantities of still-warm-from-the-oven chocolate brownies, which he happily hoovered up, and then we made fingerbobs together (see Concetta's latest blog post for pictures!) I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship!

5) Making my dinner (in a rush, obviously!) on Friday evening proved messy. Chop, chop, chopping things for my pasta sauce, I got a bit enthusiastic and took a slice off the end of my thumb. Now I'm not a girl who deals well with the sight of blood, least of all my own, and there was quantity enough of it that I had to sit down with my head between my knees for a minute, before struggling, one handed, into the first aid box to find plasters and TCP. It was all fairly gruesome, and for a time I contemplated going to casualty to see if I needed a stitch. Oooooh, and it throbbed! Now, it's well on the mend, and do you know? It's the smallest was wound in the world! A tiny mark, about two millimetres across, is all there is to see. What was all the fuss about?

6) Friday evening was our latest Making Night at Silvia's beautiful house. Only four of us this week, what with it being holiday season and all, but we were a happy bunch, respectively sewing, knitting, sketching, and beading. Conversation turned to whether we should look into setting up a local W.I., but we realised that we already had all the fun, with none of the obligation to sing Jerusalem, so we're going to stick with our current little arrangement.

7) For Saturday I had more jewellery making planned. There is an event in about eight weeks for which I'll need to have a lot more things made than I currently do! In an effort to try something new, I dug out some old books of ideas, and settled on weaving tiny sparkly seed beads to make cuff-bracelets and fine lacy beaded necklaces. My first attempts were good, but by lunchtime I was cross-eyed from staring at tiny beads all morning, so I gave myself some nice chunky jobs for the afternoon.

8) I'm a keen subscriber to Love Film, an online DVD rental thingy, and have been working my way through ER from series 1, episode 1. On Saturday night, I indulged my desire for a bit of roguishly handsome Dr Doug Ross, and boyishly charming Dr John Carter. He's coding! Shock him! (I'm practically a doctor myself ...!)

9) For weeks now, I have neglected my garden. I've spent so many hours making the inside of the house look lovely that I forgot there was an outside to deal with too. Yesterday, in a rare un-rainy moment, I shot around with a bucket and a trowel and dug up the biggest weeds (markedly bigger than some of the plants). My neighbours are on holiday at the moment, and aren't very green fingered at the best of times, so, being a nice neighbour, I threw all the snails I found in my own garden over the fence. Well ... it's good exercise for them!

10) Brace yourselves for a revelation. I have (*sneaky looks left and right*) signed up for internet dating. Actually, I did it a couple of weeks ago, but I've been in denial until now. My profile basically says, "Girl. Would like to meet boy. Own hair and teeth preferable." I know, I know, I KNOW that this is what people who are bored of being single do these days, and I know, I know, I KNOW that it doesn't have the same connotations of being sad and desperate that it used to, and let's be honest ... left to my own devises, I've hardly been successful! But I feel a bit of a loser still. I'm using eHarmony (the one with the smug Americans on the advert) which requires a girl to jump through multiple-choice hoops before she's allowed just just email a chap, and which all feels a little patronising. Still, the young (and not-so-young) men that I've been eHarmed with thus far seem nice and non-psychopathic, which is nice. I'll keep you posted, but only whilst I'm meeting people that I'm not too keen on. If I meet a keeper, I'll be coy and reserved (rather than have to say, in a few months time, "Oh yes darling, I blogged ALL about you! What? Stop! Wait! Where are you going ...?!") So to that end, I have a date tomorrow with a chap who cites one of his passions as the novels of Terry Pratchet. Well ... a girl's gotta eat!

This Weekend (16) ...

2010-08-11T22:05:00.017+01:00

OK, OK, I know that Wednesday is a little late to write up the weekend, but I've been flat out doing ... well ... not much. So here's this weekend in pictures for a change.

1) The best tea room in the world! Morning coffee and a slice of lemon drizzle cake that would adequately feed three people at the old bakery in Branscombe. The thatch, I think, makes the cake taste better. Nom nom nom!

2) Regatta week in Beer means that the flags go up along Fore Street. It's an exercise that involves four sea dogs and one old ladder. There are exchanges such as, "is the ladder straight?" "Straight-ish," and the lack of concern for health and safety is somehow a relief! To my amusement, after taking this photo, we passed three sacks lined up on the pavement, labelled, "flags," "flags," and "spare flags."

3) The old entertainment is the best! O Aargh! This sign can be ranked alongside such other public notices as, "Red Arrows display team. If wet, in Mariner's Hall," "For Sale - bunches of beetroot and kittens," and, "Scouts ... sizzling their sausages in Charlie's Yard."

4) My favourite view. Along the back of Beer beach is a wooden deck, raised from the beach by about eight feet, with beach huts along the back, and room on the deck in front to sit. From that vantage point, protected from the breeze by the cliff, and facing into the sun, a girl can get a nice tan whilst she watches the fishing boats come and go, and listens to the waves shuffling the pebbles. Heaven!

5) Sunday morning is bootfair morning! Rousden is home to the best car boot sale that I know of. An enormous field on a slight incline is jam-packed with stalls. Everything from farm machinery and second hand tools to flowers and fruit; this sale ends up being farmers market, jumble sale, and clearance all in one go. And, of course, there are bargains to be had if you have an eye for a vintage button (or 200 ...)

6) When Clouds Attack! Monday dawned fair and bright, but BOY did it change! This, can you believe it, was taken during a BREAK in the weather! This was a good moment! This was the point when the rain wasn't coming sideways off the sea like a thousand needles. And the point when, mercifully, Father Tooting stopped singing, "oh I do like to be beside the sea side!"

7) But Monday evening couldn't have been warmer. In sentiment, anyway. Monday was the 67th wedding anniversary of our friends Dot (aged 90) and Bob (a sprightly 89), and to celebrate we all, 11 of us, gathered in the static caravan of the wonderful Marion (pictured, far left) for ham, egg and chips, champagne, and smutty jokes. Once seated, you had to stay where you were, such was the snugness of the seating arrangement, but we laughed and laughed and laughed! Also in the picture are The Mothers (my friend Laura's and mine) squished on a sofa, with, you will note, a LOT of wine glasses between them!

8) And speaking of Laura, she made this out of the foil from her chocolate. She told us that is was a swan, but it's clearly a llama. Someone's had too much scrumpy ...

9) But this is how I spent most of the weekend. In and out of the Steam Gallery to look at this picture, by the marvellous Mike Bernard. I dithered and dithered and dithered and couldn't decide what to do, and in the end I had to go and get the train home. On the one hand, more money than I have, but on the other, a lovely picture of a place that I love which would, incidentally, look terrrrrriffic on the wall in my new bedroom. What would you have done?

10) And then I came home. Sad to leave, but lovely to arrive. And it still smells a bit of paint!

Kiss Me Quick

2010-08-05T09:55:00.003+01:00

Father Tooting used to joke, when returning to his South Wales motherland, "ladies and gentlemen, you are now arriving in Glamorgan. Please set your watches back fifty years." He joked about it, but it irritated him too. He was irked that a part of our small country could be so neglected that it's allowed to stagnate. In his mind, that nothing changes, and everything stays the same, that groceries are still delivered by John the Van once a week, and that banking is done in the front room on Maggie the Bank every second Thursday, that buses only run to Neath twice a day, is only negative.

Today I'll be on the 6:20pm from Waterloo to go to Devon for the weekend. "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to East Devon. Please set your watches back fifty years." And it's only positive.

Since I was seven, the first two weeks of August have been spent in a small fishing village in East Devon. We used to stay in a B&B inland, but only for a couple of years. Now it's all about the village. Mother and Father Tooting have been there since last Saturday. By now, there will be a fridge full of half portions of this, and slices of that, and a half done jigsaw on the table. Cakes bought at the W.I. bakesale will have been plundered and the tin of sweets saved each year from Christmas will be down to only the orange creams and the toffee pennies. I know this, because it's the same every year.

Tomorrow morning, I'll be woken by the sound of sea-gulls ark-ark-arking as they wheel past the window. Pa will have first shower, then pop to the bakery whilst Ma has her shower. Once the hot water tank is empty, I'll be given a slot in the bathroom ...

I'll walk out the back way to be able to see a little more of the village, then down Fore Street, lined with thatched cottages and with a brook running between the road and pavement. The house on the right will have a stall at the side selling second hand books with an honesty box. The Big Man's Shop on the right will have some 8XL (no exaggeration) T-Shirts reduced to clear. There will be a Brownie & Guide tombola at the Mariner's Hall, at which all the prizes will be grubby and second hand. The old cake shop at the bottom of the street, run by a lady who turned 80 at least five years ago will have as many wasps in the window as Chelsea buns.

And the beach will be a beautiful arc of smooth grey pebbles, punctuated with the odd fishing boat and some well ordered rows of deck chairs. Tea will be served in a china pot, and milk in a mis-matched jug. Slices of chocolate sponge will stand six inches high in the middle, and will be served with clotted cream, whether you want it or not.

And I will sit in my deck chair, with my feet on the railings, reading a book, watching the tide creep in, and out, and listening to the chatter of old friends who also spend the first two weeks of August revisiting a village where time stands still.

I'm back on Tuesday, folks. I'll bring you back some fudge.

This Weekend (15) ...

2010-08-01T22:09:00.004+01:00

It's getting hard to think of a new way to say, "I've been decorating" without it getting samey, but stick with me folks ... this weekend has a VERY exciting conclusion!

1) Thursday night. I did not quiz, for a change. I had a meeting with some local artists to ~~argue~~ talk about the forthcoming Open House event (more news to follow) so I raced out of the office a smidge early and got back to Tooting for 6:30pm. No mean feat. And a thrill to get there and then be able to bicker with other artists so creatively.

2) Then, just to make for a really, super, marvellous Thursday night, I went to Ikea to get my wardrobes. On my flatbed trolley I had:

- Two Pax wardrobe frames

- Four Bergso wardrobe doors

- Six Kompliment shelves

- Four Kompliment drawers

- One Billy bookcase

- Two rails

- Six storage boxes

- Four knobs (*snigger*)

- One jewellery rack

- Two extension leads

- One new duvet set

- Five gold rings

- Four calling birds ...

Needless to say, the trolley was heavy, and whilst people acknowledged my poor steering abilities by giving me a wide berth, not one of the buggers offered me a hand! I left Ikea at 10:30, muttering a lot of blasphemous things under my breath. But I think that most people leaving Ikea do that.

3) On Friday morning, I had a man in. He was a carpet fitter and he was here to fit a new carpet in my bedroom. It's beauuuutiful and fluffy and has super thick underlay so it's a bit bouncy. When the man left, I lay on the floor for a minute, just because I could.

4) The afternoon was then a magnificent display of domestic goddessery. Really. It was marvellous. You'd have been very impressed. Except the part where I noticed that the raspberries in the fridge were a bit on the ... um ... fluffy side, so I turned them into cakes.

5) Then Friday evening was the second of our Making Evenings. Five of us gathered at The Lovely Amelia's house and we all settled in with our respective projects. Amelia, Silvia and Gillian stitched whilst Concetta sketched and I made a necklace and a couple of pairs of earrings. And we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves!

6) On Saturday morning I had an appointment with Crazy Martin to get my hair cut. I think he's lost his bottle. It's more conservative than when I went in, and that's not like him at all. Perhaps he's sickening for something.

7) And ... dum-da-dummmm!! Then I went home and got stuck into the flat pack. I did the small things - the bookcase and the drawers - until the cavalry arrived. Well, when I say cavalry, I mean Andy. It's the best I could manage! Wardrobe frame number one took us a while, and there was a lot of head scratching, but frame two went together in no time. Then, just as we'd managed to get the two big beasties upright and in position, Soph and Steve arrived to help. Once we worked out that we were trying to put the door hinges on upside down, it all went together nicely. We decided that, once the heavy stuff was done, we'd call it a day ...

8) ... and so we all settled down with some wine, a prawn curry, some wine, chocolate fondant, some wine, gingersnaps, wine, and then some amaretto to finish. Well ... we had to toast the wardrobes.

9) This morning was all about the fillings for the wardrobes. The rails, the shelves, the drawers. It didn't all quite go to plan, but, with a bit of creative re-jigging it all came together. These jobs always take about three times longer than you expect though, don't they? I've got clothes off hanging rails, and into wardrobes and jumpers out of boxes onto shelves. I've folded and arranged and unpacked and piled all the live long day, and have, after one year, unpacked my bedroom. Bliss.

10) And tonight I will spend my first night in two weeks sleeping in my own bedroom, which now looks like this ...

I'm a little bit dirty ...

2010-07-29T23:04:00.002+01:00

... as evidenced by the fact that I am currently eating a KFC two piece variety meal, whilst sober.

Hell fire! Don't judge me people! At least it's not a three piece meal!

The Grace of God

2010-07-27T21:00:00.004+01:00

Work took me to St Albans today. I haven't been there for years, and, as is normal when visiting a place that doesn't fit the everyday routine, I found myself remembering previous trips.

One trip in particular, actually. A retirement party when I would have been about 22.

When I left University and came to The Big Smoke, I worked for one of the big London estates. The team of people managing our 200 acre patch of London was larger than the company I'm working for now, but it was a warm and cozy, old fashioned, family-based place to work.

One of our team members had joined the company fresh from University himself in the mid-fifties and worked there, man and boy. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of the estate in the 44 years he'd worked there. "Have you done anything on 30 Acacia Avenue?" He would remove his glasses and draw on one arm, as if he were smoking a pipe, then say in a slow, considered way, "30 Bourne Street. Yes, I think so. Come in, Tooting, come in and sit down. Would you like a biscuit? Now then. Number 30. Yes I remember. I dealt with that building in 1964. The tenant was a Mrs Jones and her husband was a Swiss banker. They had blue wallpaper in the master bedroom, and a cat called Fluffy ..." Shortly after he turned 64 he announced his plan to retire the second he hit 65, and a ripple of panic went around the building. All of that knowledge would be lost, and a lovely man with it.

But it's with some effort that I remember all of this now. During that last year of his working life something happened that means that I will always remember him in a tragic way.

His son was 23 and had just graduated from university. He was taking an extended holiday with his girlfriend travelling around Africa, before coming home to start working for a living. Nothing usual there. In fact, at the time, it was more unusual NOT to do something like that. Mine was a quiet year that year, with my friends being scattered around the world, sending emailed newsletters from time to time.

Whilst in Uganda, my colleague's son joined a group of tourists on an organised tour of Biwindi National Park. The group of ten were all British, American and New Zealanders. Eight of the ten were shot dead by Rwandan rebels. How the other two escaped is anyone's guess. Their cause was protest at Anglo-American support of the Rwandan government; something none of their victims knew much, if anything about. They could have chosen any group of tourists. But they didn't. They chose this one.

I can remember the afternoon when this unfolded with extraordinary clarity. I can remember hearing that British tourists had been shot, then finding out that he had been with the tour company that had been involved, but no-one could find out whether he was in the group in question or not. I remember a helplessness of watching news unfold on the BBC, and not knowing whether it was personal. And I can remember sitting in the office of one of our secretaries when she took the call from her bosses wife, and hearing, in the metallic tones that you hear the other end of the someone else's phone conversation, "oh god, it's him. He's dead. What will we do?"

Later that long, sober afternoon, one of our directors came into the office that I shared with my boss. He looked at me and asked how old I was. I was still 21 then. He continued to look at me, clearly considering whether to speak the words he was thinking. After a long pause, he said, "his life and yours were practically the same. It could have been you instead."

Of course it never could have been. I was far too cowardly to have gone travelling at all, let alone to somewhere so adventurous. But all I could think about that afternoon were my far-flung friends. I desperately wanted to go out, Mother Hen style, and round them all up where they'd be safe. So I didn't reply, but excused myself and sobbed in the ladies toilet for a few minutes and then went back to my desk to email them all, one by one, a little, "thinking of you," note which only half of them ever acknowledged.

So when, at the end of that year, our colleague threw a retirement party at his home in St Albans, with his wife, daughter, and son's girlfriend (one of the miraculous survivors) in attendance, the mood was not one of celebration and well wishing, but of sorrow and pity. The mood reflected the fact that some people simply hadn't known what to say to him for so many months that it was a relief not to look at his rapidly-aged face any more. The mood reflected the fact that the thing had been so horrific that no-one had ever really known how to express sympathy without saying something crass. No-one asked how he could bear not to fill his days with work. No-one asked whether, when he looked at the girlfriend, he resented her life. No-one asked what they talked about when they were alone together. It was ghastly.

So in St Albans this morning, I found myself searching the faces of men in the crowd, wondering whether he was still living there. Then, after a time, I started to wonder, in a slightly macabre manner, if he was still living at all.

I'd not thought about him for years. My life has changed immeasurably since then, and my years at that company seem so removed from anything I'm doing now that I have to think hard to dredge up any memories of the place at all. So it was a surprise to think about that day so clearly today, and a surprise to associate the town so strongly with it. And a suprise to realise that, 12 years on, the memory of what happened to someone I never even met makes me grateful that all my friends came home to their office jobs and mortgages, and most importantly that, whilst it could have been me instead, it wasn't.

Tropical Twitching

2010-07-26T20:57:00.003+01:00

Living in a very urban area on the edge of a very large city, a girl doesn't expect much in the way of wildlife on a daily basis. Mice, rats, the occasional hedgehog, and of course the place is crawling with bloody foxes, (but people get to twitchy when I suggest establishing the Tooting Hunt. I assume they're anxious about where we'd kennel the hounds ...)

But I've taken some joy this summer in a wee spot of birdwatching. You see, for all our limited supply of wildlife, we can offer a rather quirky line in twitching. We have a local flock of parakeets. Not what you'd expect from a not-very-tropical corner of town, is it?

They sound like those toys that dogs chew, so you can hear the tell-tale squeek squeek squeek a little in advance, then they'll come over in sixes and sevens, usually with one poor sucker a second or two behind, squeeking a little, "wait for meeeeee!" at his friends. Always the same time of day - that bit of the evening after the sun goes over and before dusk, and always heading in the same direction. They must be commuting, I assume.

Where did they come from?! Well I have two theories ...

Theory 1 - Parakeet Amore

Percy and Prunella Parakeet lived in a cage in the lounge of a Grumpy Lady. She gave them a mirror to look in, and a string of seed to nibble at, and they had three perches to hop between. In the evening the Grumpy Lady would cover them over with a tea towel and it made them sad so that they'd no longer squeak squeak squeak to one another.

By day though, they could peep between the bars of their cage and out the window and see other, less attractive birds flying freely around, splashing in puddles and eating juicy worms. They would squeak to one another about how they dreamed that one day they could join the ugly brown birds and spread their lovely green wings.

The Grumpy Lady came every day to change their water, and when she put her big fat arm through the door of the cage, Percy and Prunella would cower in the far corner of their cage, and snuggle together. One very sunny day, when the Grumpy Lady had the windows in her house open, and Percy and Prunella could hear the other birds chirruping merrily to themselves, Percy came up with a plan.

He squeaked his idea to Prunella and she agreed that they should give it a go. So that day, when the Grumpy Lady came to change the water, they took their usual positions at the back of the cage, took a deep breath, then flew at the Grumpy Lady's big fat arm, pecking her fat fingers and making her jump backwards. In her shock, she was slow to close the door of the cage, and quick as a flash, Percy and Prunella darted out the door, across the room, and out the open window.

Up, up, up! they flew, feeling the wind under their green wings and they squeak, squeak, squeaked their way up to the top of the tallest trees! Percy and Prunella had lots of little baby parakeets, who in turn had babies of their own, and so their little family of free parakeets grew in their tropical Tooting home. And they all lived happily ever after.

Theory 2 - The Lone Parakeet

Paul the parakeet lived in a house with an old man. The old man liked having Paul around for company, and talked to him all the time. Paul had a cage to call home, but the door was always open for him to come and go as he pleased, so he spent a lot of time sitting on curtain rails and lampshades, squeaking and chattering to the old man. They were very happy together.

But the man was very old and was poorly and one day his daughter came to help him pack up some things and move into a home where people would look after him. In all the fuss though, everyone forgot about Paul, and he sat watching from the top of the curtain rail whilst they all left.

When everyone had gone, and Paul had realised that they weren't coming back for him, he had a good flap around the house to look for a way out, and he found a tiny broken pane of glass and squeezed out and flew over to a nearby tree where he hid himself in amongst the leaves so he could think.

Days went by and Paul missed having someone to talk to. He flew around from time to time to look for something to eat, but he was a bit scared of the other birds. The sparrow and starlings flew around in big groups, and the pigeons were all much bigger than him, and they all stared at his bright green feathers and made him feel bad. He was so different to everyone else that he felt lonely even when he was surrounded by other birds.

Then, one day, he was there, perched on his branch, when he saw a flash of green past his tree. "WOWEE," thought Paul. "Who was she?! She's GORGEOUS!" and he flap, flap, flapped off his branch after her as quick as his wings would take him.

Finally he caught her up and caught her eye. "Hello," she said. "I'm Petra. I escaped from my old owner's house weeks ago and I've never seen another greeny like us since then. It's lovely to meet you." Paul was smitten. They went for a good fly around the neighbourhood and found seeds on birdfeeders to eat, and Paul was no longer scared of the other birds because now he didn't feel lonely. Paul couldn't believe his luck!

Before long, they were beak-fencing (the saucy devils) and that night they snuggled next to one another on the same branch. Paul and Petra were inseparable after that, and over time they met other escaped parakeets who came to live in the tree with them, and start a little green colony. And that tree was in Tooting. And they all lived happily ever after.

Either way, there's loads of them now. And they look so free, whizzing around the south-west London sky. I only hope they like eating worms ...

This Weekend (15) ...

2010-07-25T22:25:00.003+01:00

Was generally a good one. But can you believe that it's Sunday evening AGAIN?!

1) Pub quiz. My old pal Andy came with me this week and was very much worth his place on the team, getting LOTS of answers for Team Biscuit. Bravo him! He'll be invited again. We didn't win, but it's the taking part that counts.

2) The quiz has a convoluted ending each week. The £2 to take part in the quiz goes in the pot and you get a raffle ticket. After the quiz, a ticket is drawn, and the winner has to do a round of Playboy Your Cards Right. This is the same as Play Your Cards Right, but with naked ladies on the (worryingly) laminated and enlarged cards. Classy. If you get to the end of the six card run, you win the money in the pot. If you don't you win a bottle of wine. Are you following this so far?! Anyway, I won the raffle (HOORAY!) and I Playboyed My Cards Right, and I won ONE HUNDRED POUNDS! YAYAYAY!! I did a little £100 dance. Which is not the same dance that the lady on the six of diamonds would do, let me tell you ...

3) THEN, on the way home from the quiz, we saw a naked man. There he was, standing in his bedroom window, curtains open, lights on, having a good stretch (not a euphemism). What's a girl to do?! (Stare, slack jawed, and snigger a bit. That's what).

4) On Friday, I ticked lots of things off my Things I Must Do list. I bought bedroom curtains, blinds and curtain poles, I hit the supermarket, I painted my Feature Wall (Teal Tension), and I rustled up a prawn curry for dinner.

5) Then on Friday evening, I met my friend Joey and we went to Amelia's show at our wee local gallery. It was, of course, fabulous! She's one talented lady. I've got my eye on one or two things when I've got a bit more spare cash (am currently more skint than Greece). Meanwhile I have to settle for being a bit inspired.

6) I woke up fiendishly early on Saturday morning. Heavens knows why. I didn't know that 5:30 am on a weekend even existed. Still. It was nice to doze and shuffle and snuggle in and doze again, without needing to shoot out of bed, so I languished, and watched the morning turn from dull and overcast to bright and sunny before I tipped out of bed.

7) Then, for a change, I painted a bit more in my bedroom.

8) Facebook is a wonderful thing. I recently looked up an old friend from university and we've been in touch for a bit. He was in London this weekend to take part in a triathlon (pure craziness!) so I met up with him for a couple of hours yesterday. Having not seen him for at least four years, I was mildly apprehensive, but we just fell into a four year old patter and it was like we'd never lost touch. We sat and we chatted and we walked and chattered and we sat and chattered again, and when we came to saying goodbye, I realised that I'd missed him these past few years. So now I'm not going to let him go! I'll be a veritable stalker to him now, I think, just to make sure he doesn't wander off a second time!

9) A night out in Wimbledon with some marvellous friends. Cocktails, chilled rose, nibbles, gossip, people watching and idle chit-chat. Bliss.

10) And today (fanfare) I finished painting my bedroom, and put up my new blinds and curtain poles and curtains. And. It. Looks. Fab. New carpet on Friday, then wardrobes (which, after a year of hanging rails and cardboard boxes, I am indescribably excited about) and I'm done! so happy with my new bedroom imagine - all light and airy and soothing and zen-like. What will I do when I've decorated every room though? This house simply isn't big enough!

There's no such thing as bad publicity ...

2010-07-20T22:42:00.002+01:00

... or is there?

I'm a big fan of the new articles that start, "And finally ...". Those ones that only come out on days when there is mercifully little else to report.

Today there were no crazed gun-men running around the north-east, no soldiers were killed, and no oil leaked. Glory be! Which meant that there was room for a few crazy news stories.

Today, my star WHAT WHERE YOU THINKING? prize goes to this one (animal lovers should not read on).

Firstly, for clarity's sake, I'm not saying this is right. I'm not saying that it's a good thing in ANY way to put a parachute on a donkey. And it's not funny. Not funny. Not. Funny.

Well, it is a little bit funny.

Not the actual squealing donkey bit - that must have been pretty horrific all 'round - but the bit that went before.

I have a mental image of a handful of be-suited men sitting around a table in a hotel at the Sea of Azov, drumming their fingers on the table.

Dimitry: What can we do, Viktor, Ivan, what can we do? We need to promote our little beach and we need something good.

Viktor: You're right Dimitry. We need something that is both glamorous and sea-sidey.

Ivan: What about a wet t-shirt competition?

Dimitry: No, no, no! Too seedy! I want some class!

Viktor: Miss Azov contest?

Dimitry: Viktor! This is 2010! We are a sophisticated nation. No, no. Something for the whole family.

Ivan: Sandcastle competition?

Viktor: Fishing lessons?

Ivan: Sausage sizzle?

Viktor: One of those giant inflatable banana things that you pull behind a speedboat?

Dimitry: For goodness sake! Why can we not come up with any good ideas? Just one! That's all I ask.

Ivan: Well I saw this thing in a comic book with a donkey and a parachute ...?

Dimitry: That's it! Viktor! You get the parachute! Ivan! The donkey! We're a GO GO GO!

This Weekend (14) ...

2010-07-18T23:07:00.003+01:00

Another weekend of domesticity. I'll try and make "painting walls" into a ten point weekend summary, in the usual manner ...

1) Thursday night, quiz night. The quiz master decided that life would be more interesting if Team Biscuit was split in two. The boys became Team Hobnob and the girls were Team Iced Gem. The boys came last and the girls came third. Perhaps our usual winning form can be put down to the gender mix.

2) Friday morning. A few errands, the caff for breakfast, picked up the sodding car from the garage (it having failed its sodding MOT last week), a few more errands, and home. Jobs done.

3) Last weekend I inadvertently peeled some wall paper off my bedroom wall. Well, you know how it is. There was a corner. I picked at it. So I guess I'm committed to decorating it now! I cleared everything movable out of my bedroom into the spare room, leaving a wee corridor of space from the door to the bed, thus making up my snug sleeping quarters for the next few nights. But as I finished clearing the room, spreading dust sheets and assembling tools and materials, the doorbell rang. A friend dropping 'round for a cuppa and a good yarn. Just in the nick of time!! I nearly had to pick up a paintbrush!

4) All delaying tactics used up, I had to get going. A bit of unscrewing, a bit of filling, a bit of sanding, a bit of dismantling.

5) Friday night saw a gang of us at the kitchen table of the fabulous Concetta from over at Glittering Shards, each with our own creative project. Around the table seven lovely ladies sketched, stitched, designed, cut, struck, threaded, and gossipped. Bliss. And we decided to do it again in two weeks time at Amelia's house.

6) Saturday. Hot paintbrush action. All day.

7) Amongst all the clearing out and arranging of things I've done recently, I found a counted cross-stitch, half done, from years ago. On a whim, I picked it up last night, and spent the evening watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off, whilst sewing the face of a small teddy who will, when finished, depict " Septembear". Maybe it'll be a gift for a friend who is expecting. Maybe it'll just spend the next ten years in a bag, in a box, in a cupboard, still unfinished. But for now, I'm enjoying the gentle process of stitching for stitching's sake.

8) Sunday. Hot painting action. All morning. Until ...

9) Amelia has an exhibition starting this Tuesday at Spout; a community gallery space in Furzedown. This afternoon I helped her get her show set up and ready for the public. If you'd like to drop by and see Amelia and her work, she'll be at 74 Moyser Road, SW16 for the next two weeks. I'm sure she'd love to see you!

10) And now it's Sunday evening. The skirting boards, window and door frames in my bedroom have been glossed. The fireplace has been undercoated and top coated. The ceiling has been whitewashed. Three walls have been painted "Pacific Breeze" (that's a slightly bluey white to you), and one is to become Teal Tension in due course. I'm on the sofa with a embroidered bears next to me and plans to hit the John Lewis fabric department tomorrow to look for teal curtain material. But for now, I think it's bed time. G'night.

Three little words

2010-07-15T23:45:00.004+01:00

This evening, my friend Pandy called.

We chatted about all sorts - plans for the weekend, and plans for a weekend away in a couple of months with a gang of friends. We talked about pub quizzes and a lack of clean cutlery. We talked about barges and decorating and weddings and Glastonbury.

Halfway through the conversation, he remembered that there was a half bottle of wine left in his car, and he went to retrieve it, and joked on the way that I reminded him of wine.

He said that he always thought about me on sunny days, but only when he's in Streatham, and not if he's anywhere else, and that's why he'd called. Just because he thought of me.

So, he summarised, the three words that he associates with me are sun, Streatham, and wine.

We both agreed that that's not a bad combo.

Me Myself and I

2010-07-14T22:58:00.001+01:00

I think that I've alluded in the past to the fact that I work in property. In fact, I'm a chartered surveyor. Sorry ... that should read "Chartered Surveyor". Please note the capitals. It's not like being a heart surgeon or a barrister, I realise, but it took a lot of work and needs some maintaining and is something that I'm pretty proud of.

To be passed off by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, you have to sit an interview. One hour of grilling on anything that you (a) claim to have done in the course of your training, and (b) anything that you ought to have covered in the course of your training. A favourite way to trip up the slightly wobbly candidate is to ask them to explain the difference between "price", "value" and "worth" without using those three words. It's tricky. Try it now. Go on ...

OK? Now try this. Explain "isolation", "solitude" and "loneliness" without using those three words.

I know, it's really just semantics. But maybe that's what matters? The minute difference and the detail. I get chastened regularly for using the word "nice" in a positive way, when really it's so very dismissive. And just this evening, we were teasing a colleague for saying that he wanted to be "fresh" for an openly gay client. The interpretation of a word. The way we choose to define a particular word is critical.

So to that end, I should confess, partly to The Readers (yes ... that's all of you), and specifically to one particular reader (and neighbour and friend and role model ...) that I recently deliberately interpreted her question to enable me to tell a half truth. I seek forgiveness.

When asked by said friend recently if I liked my life, and if I liked being on my own, I said yes. I have a good life. I have a nice house, good friends, a job (nay, a career), good health, a family who love me and who I love. I have a car and long legs and hair that (usually) goes where it's put. I have a good life. And do I like it? Yes. I like all the elements of my life. I'm fundamentally lucky and I appreciate that. So it wasn't a lie. I like my life.

And do I like being on my own? Well I guess that's where the semantics comes into it all.

Isolation. Technically, according to the OED, "the process of being isolated ... for patients with infectious diseases ..." Well maybe that's a little extreme. But I would say that isolation is very factual. I am not alone. I have, as I've mentioned, a lovely group of friends, plus colleagues I can socialise with, plus nice neighbours. I'm not isolated. I'm surrounded!

Solitude. OED offers the following: "the state or situation of being alone: she savoured her few hours of freedom and solitude." which I rather like. The example drawn paints solitude as a positive, which I wholeheartedly approve of. Solitude is a lovely and fulfilling thing. It's all about being able to come and go as you please. Solitude is being able to wear your jarmas all day on a Sunday. Solitude is being able to wee with the door open. I love it!

And loneliness? "Unfrequented and remote" apparently. I'd go further. It's when you wake in the morning and the emptiness of the other side of the bed makes you feel agoraphobic. It's hearing the empty seats in the lounge screaming at you. It's the bursting feeling of unspoken words churning in your head and loitering on the tip of your tongue. It's saying goodbye to a friend at the end of an evening and resenting the fact that they are going home to a share of the sofa or a pre-warmed bed. It's a void that feels incapable of being plugged. It's endless. What is loneliness? It's being in the house now, alone, and being aware that I occupy one corner of the sofa in the corner of one room, on the ground floor of the house and the rest of the house is full of emptiness.

So so I like my life? Yes, I do actually. The up side of singledom is that I can please myself all the time, so to not like my life when it's all mine would be a waste, don't you think? I like my life.

And do I like being on my own? No. I loathe it. It's not how we were designed and it's not how we're meant to be. It's not good for body or soul and it's something that clings to me always. But it's a hard habit to shake, so I hope you understand why I told a small pork pie.

And, my lovely friend, remember this - never envy someone else their life, because you never know what it's really like. And however overwhelming you feel your life is, it beats life being underwhelmed, Trust me.

This Weekend (13) ...

2010-07-04T23:18:00.003+01:00

Unlucky for some!

So this weekend had a bit of a fuzzy start, what with not being at work last week, but why don't I pick it up on Thursday evening, like I usually do?

1) Pub quiz. There were meant to be six of us in our award winning team, but, for one reason and another, there were only two. In the music round we knew no answers, and were so busy sniggering at our crappness that we forgot to go back and write our guesses in the blanks on page one. Consequence ... second worst team. Ha! At least we weren't worst I suppose.

2) Friday morning, I hopped out of bed, as I did every morning last week, at an unembarrassing 8am, showered, dressed, toast and jam and lots of coffee in the back garden, then to work.

3) I met the lovely Gillian down the road for a tour of E&A Wates. I wasn't really sure what to expect, so it was a lovely surprise to discover that it was a fascinating morning. Behind the shop - a fabulously kitsch, chrome-fronted store, with some amazing (and expensive) furniture, is a workshop where they repair just about any furniture. We were talked through the art of veneering, wood turning, French polishing, upholstering, and it wasn't remotely dry. And what perfect timing! I came home enthused, and ready for a bit more DIY! (Although I did feel a bit guilty that, having been talked to about furniture restoration, I was going home to paint my own furniture. Pah well!)

4) Amelia popped 'round and we sat together in the garden with tea and Amaretti biscuits to write a press release for her forthcoming show. If you'd like to come along, you'll be able to read more about it here, in due course.

5) The Ikea flat-pack wall unit that I bought came in three boxes and said, in big letters, and in diagrams, on the side of the largest, that building it was a job for two men. I thought I'd get the bits out and see how far I could get on my own. When I'd built the frame and got the thing upright an into the alcove, with a hole cut out the back for the power socket, I decided there was probably no need to call in reinforcements to watch me screw the doors on. Am DIY woman! Grr!!

6) Saturday morning. More decorating. Are you spotting a theme? But things were starting to take shape, so it was all very cathartic.

7) I'm slightly ashamed to tell you what I did on Saturday afternoon. But not THAT ashamed. I went to see Eclipse. Now I know that I'm not really the target demographic, but sod it! The four of us went to an afternoon showing, in a screen full of teenaged girls. Oh well ... who needs pride, dignity, self respect, etc etc etc, when they have a semi-naked wolf-boy twitching his pecks on the screen? Not me!

8) My neighbour recently qualified as a plumber and has set up business with a friend. I've been putting off decorating my bedroom for ages because I couldn't work out how to work around a badly placed radiator. But today the two new plumbers came 'round and spent a day painstakingly lifting floorboards and running copper pipes and draining boilers. Bless them, it took hours! And apparently something still needs to be done tomorrow. But the radiator is now in a nice, easily worked around kind of a place, and what do you know? I've inadvertently started decorating another room, just as I was finishing the last one. Rats!!

9) So whilst the boys were grafting upstairs, I was grafting downstairs. The new wall unit got filled with books and games and almost all of my jewellery making kit. The stereo got set up and the wires run into the back of the unit, a lamp got rewired, table tops were varnished, desks were undercoated (twice) and the curtains were finally hemmed and pressed and hung. The room now looks, if not complete, then at least together. Just a top coat on the desk to go, and a few pictures and trinkets, and it'll be done. Hooray! My dining room is tantalisingly close to being too damned nice to eat in!

10) And now here I am. End of my week off. Back in the office in nine measly hours, and NOT in the mood for it! I'm already plotting another week off later in the summer to do the same happy home based pottering again. Meanwhile though, Footloose is on the telly. Marvellous! The tale of a community being brought together by rock and roll and dancing. They don't make 'em like they used to!

Progress report

2010-06-30T22:26:00.003+01:00

Midway through the week, and I'm making headway.

My dining suite, previously my parent's 1970s, mahogany stained table and beige velour upholstered chairs, is now "chalk white", and upholstered in bright pink, and looks fab. I've mastered the power drill (well, when I say "mastered" I mean "used") and put up a curtain rail and a radiator shelf. Tomorrow I'm making curtains. Making. Curtains. And then I have a wall unit to put up and I think my dining room will be finished. In fact, it will be transformed.

I'm getting a real kick out of doing all of these very tangible things. Every job makes a difference, and, as one friend said, the smell of paint is the smell of progress. I'm feeling very Ideal Home!

But there are loads of other jobs too.

I've had quotes to replace the two double glazed panels that have blown and gone manky inside, and tomorrow I'll pick one and book that in for next week. Not glamorous, is it? What a dull way to spend money. I'll pay a sizable amount of money for someone to take out windows and put in ... windows. Whoop-de-doo. I know it needs doing, and I know that I'll feel better when they're done, but new windows aren't very exciting, are they? I know that, when I invite my friend's 'round to show them the newly finished dining room, they'll oooooh and aaaaah in all the right places, but the phenomenally more expensive windows won't be noticed. At all. By anyone.

Today I paid a man to put a TV aerial on the roof. Again, a fair chunk of money paid out, and I can see a massive difference - there is no antenna balanced on a box behind the telly now, and I've managed to reduce the huge knot of wires and cables in the corner - so money well spent!

But I can't get other people excited about it, can I? "Would you like to pop 'round and see my new tv aerial?" "No." Fair enough.

It's a harsh lesson in the cost of home ownership. The boring and necessary stuff costs more and pleases less.

Or maybe it's another lesson. The things I'm enjoying most are the things I'm doing myself. Maybe it's just a lesson in the thrill of getting your hands dirty!

Anyway, got to dash. Got curtains to pin!

This Weekend (12) ...

2010-06-27T23:21:00.003+01:00

I WAS SOBER!
Hoorah!

But I was also a bit poorly.
Boo.

Just hayfever, I think, which I am suffering from in a "Biblical Plague" kind of a way this year, so I'm dosed up on, I think, four different types of tablet which give the world a pleasing blurry fugginess.

Anyway, the weekend panned out like this ...

1) Before my usual appointment at the pub quiz this week, I had to go to a meeting regarding the Artist's Open House event that we're hosting in October. Nothing amazes me like the ability of artists to stray from the point. At 8pm, having been there for an hour and a half, and having debated whether the event should be called "Open House" or "Open Studio" for around an hour, one of my committee co-members rocked back on his chair and asked if we should break for a cup of tea. I wept quietly in the corner. But I also managed to bagsy a walking tour, and a techy "press the red button now" type tour for my patch, so it was worth the effort.

2) Pub quiz. Diminished team, but we didn't embarrass ourselves. A question for you all, however (no prizes for getting it right this week): Only three Mr Men have teeth. Name any one of them ...

3) On Friday morning, I felt like poo. Poooooo! And with 100 jobs to do this week, I felt that I'd be cheating to not keep going anyway. But I sat down on the sofa to think about what to do first, and woke up an hour and a half later, feeling much better.

4) Which meant that on Friday afternoon I could order my new bedroom carpet, buy a power drill, buy a new wall unit for my dining room, go to Sainsburys and return a mistakenly purchased bra to Marks and Spencer. Rock and roll!

5) On Saturday my parents came to visit. Before they arrived, I had time to have some cakes baked and iced, so I could give the illusion of being a domestic goddess. But they came, they brought plants, we planted them, Dad broke stuff (it's a habit he can't shake when he's at my house), we ate, walked on the Common and I waved them goodbye. A nice compact, bijou kind of a visit. Perfect!

6) Today was the seventh birthday of my neighbour's son. I bought him a little Lego game which he was disproportionately pleased with. As a six year old, seven was all he could think about, but I was struck by what a very little boy he still is. When I was seven I thought I was quite the grown up. I wonder if that's a Girl vs Boy thing or a Big Sister vs Only Child thing, or a Me vs Him thing. I can also remember that, for my seventh birthday party, I wore some slouchy pink dungarees and thought I looked ace. So probably I wasn't half the grown up I thought I was. Probably I was a very little girl still. Odd how you remember things though, no?

7) Whilst I was baking some (more) cakes to take to a friend's house this afternoon, my phone pinged a message from an unknown number. "Tooting, is this your no. still?" "Yes it is! Who's this?" It was someone I had a very lovely date with about five years ago, and never heard from again. I've no idea why he's chosen now to look me up, but we've had a pleasant afternoon exchanging messages, so I chose not to ask him, and enjoy the chat.

8) There was some football on the telly. 'Nuff said.

9) I spent a very lovely afternoon loafing in my friend's back garden, enjoying the sun and the company and lots of food and some food and a bit more food and chatting the unspecified chat of friends. I told them about the flock of parakeets that are currently living around here, and they looked at me as if I were mad. Ten minutes later, a flash of green shot across the garden. "See," I said. They nodded.

10) I have thirty followers! Whoop de doo! I'm going to have a little party RIGHT NOW!

Stripping

2010-06-26T22:11:00.003+01:00

This is a short post about stripping.

As you may recall from my list of Jobs What Need Doing, I have a chest of drawers and two little bedside chests that I want to have stripped back to bare wood. This is a job that I was resigned to, but not looking forward to, doing myself.

Just out of interest, I just looked online to see if there are any local furniture strippers who I could get to do it for me, and I found a bloke with, in my humble opinion, the BEST company name ever!

So tomorrow, I'll be calling Jack the Stripper for a quote. Because how could I resist?!

Breakdown

2010-06-26T00:50:00.002+01:00

Yesterday was my last day in the office until 5th July. Doesn't that sound like a blissfully long time? Actually it's only a week, but with the cheeky Friday addition, it makes for a nice loooong break.

Not a break at all, as it happens, for the time off work is essentially so that I have a good run of time to crack on with some work on the house. I suspect that I'll go back to work for a rest after this week.

My intentions are to:
-paint my dining furniture
- hang a shelf and some pictures
- construct a wall unit
- strip a chest of drawers and two bed side tables
- make some curtains
- order bedroom carpet
- get a radiator moved
- get a TV aerial on the roof
- order the furniture for my bedroom
- start work on the paintwork in my bedroom

How far down this list do you think I'll get ...?

Well I ticked off a few preliminary jobs today, which included a need to go to Ikea, Croydon. Oh, the horror!!!

I went today expecting it to he hell, expecting not to be able to buy the one piece of furniture I really wanted, expecting to talk to morons and expecting to send money on things I didn't want or need. And in fact, I was pleasantly surprised. I found the wall unit that I wanted pretty easily, found a man to print out the reference numbers for all the bits for me and offer to help drag the heavy bits off the shelves, and came home with only one item (costing just 99p) I didn't need*. I even found a way to break free of the blue arrow route that they MAKE you go around. It was an almost pleasant experience. Hoorah for me!

There was a moment, however, when I was reminded of the purgatory that Ikea can be. In the bed department were two women. A mother and daughter, at a guess, the daughter being in her late twenties. The mother was sitting on the edge of a bed, doing that half hearted bounce that English people do when they are trying to establish whether a mattress will be comfortable. The daughter was standing, arms by her side, tears slowly rolling down her cheeks.

The mother asked her what she thought. Is this one better than that one? Would you prefer mattress Sven, or mattress Abba? It was an innocent enough question, but I could see that any reason had gone out the window a long time ago. I could sense that the daughter had Ikea Syndrome. She was going to bite. So naturally I hovered around to listen ...

"Mattresses? MATTRESSES?! I don't care! I don't care any more! How long have we been here? HOURS! And you KEEP picking up vases! I want to go home, but I don't even know where I am anymore! I don't even know where in London I am, so I can't leave, even though I want to! I WANT TO GO HOME!"

I gawped. I couldn't help it. I mean, we all know how easy it is to snap in Ikea, but MY WORD, she had totally flipped!

As I was driving home, smug, with my set of stacking Lubdarg boxes on the back seat, I got to thinking that Ikea have missed a trick. They have a creche and a cafe, and they have those little wooden pencils everywhere, and even a home delivery service, but they don't have a counselling facility. I might write a letter to someone (who'll presumably be called Bjorn) with a suggestion that they install a spa facility. After all, if anyone knows how to do it, it's the Swedes.

* A fish shaped ice cube tray! I might not need it, but BOY did I want it! My summer beverages can now have minnows bobbing in them. Amazing!

Is it wrong ...?

2010-06-23T22:30:00.003+01:00

... to actively dislike a little old lady?

There's this woman who gets on my train. I don't see her every morning, but I do see her most mornings. I get on at Streatham Common and one stop later, she gets on at Balham.

She's small, and has a little old lady short curly hair-do, and wears powder and spectacles. Not glasses. They are most definitely spectacles. She wears sensible flat shoes with buckles on, and always, always, always wears a beige mac and a wee checky scarf. She carries one of those nylon shopping bags that Nanas have been using since before reusable shopping bags were trendy.

This isn't why I don't like her. I mean, there's no excuse for an ugly handbag, but it's not a reason to dislike a person.

The first time I noticed her, she was sitting next to me, and busying around with her purse (one of those wide flat ones in tan with a metal clasp and a smell of peppermints) and her driving licence dropped out onto my lap. As I handed it back to her, I saw her birth date. 1954. She's 56. FIFTY SIX! Read the description above again. Are you picturing a 56 year old? NO! She is seven years younger than my mother, and yet I had her pegged as someone at least ten years older.

This isn't why I don't like her either. I'm no fashion icon, and I might be a little more frumpy than I could be, but I don't think I look 50! But still, it would be mean to dislike her for that, no?

The reason I dislike her is that she uses her old-lady-lookingness to get a seat on the train. Can you believe it!? What a rotten trick!

There are always rather more people on the train than there are seats for them, and so there are always people standing up in the aisles and around the doors. Obviously it's always nice to sit down, given the choice, but it's only a fifteen minute journey, so if there's no seat, it's not the end of the world. This is the mentality of almost all the people on the train.

Not the "old" lady though. OH NO! She gets a seat every morning, the "old" troll. I've started watching her when she gets on now. She stands amongst the seats then starts muttering. The muttering attracts people's attention to her, and when someone then offers her a seat thinking she's genuinely old, and not just badly dressed, she manages to look peevish about it.

Every morning.

So that's why I don't like her. Not because she's old and has an ugly bag. Not because she's not really old, just badly dressed. Not even because she gets a seat every morning. But because she has the nerve to try it on every day, and wins!

So tell me. Is is wrong to actively dislike a little old lady?

This Weekend (11) ...

2010-06-21T22:41:00.002+01:00

... I'm a little tardy.

I spent the bulk of this weekend either (a) drunk or (b) hungover, which makes finding 10 inspiring things to say about my weekend a little tricky. Ten things which I'm prepared to reveal to the group anyway ...

So anyway, I thought, if I left it a day, I might be able to think of more weekend things, and pad this baby out a bit. I'm not sure that I'm quite up to ten yet, but let's see if we can't eek a LOT of white wine* out a bit longer.

1) Thursday evening rushed up a me a bit. Having spent a week saying to a client, "we should get that offer out this week. Really. This week. Yes, I think it would be wise. Shall I send that offer out this week?" I got instructions to send afore mentioned offer out at 17:55 pm. Bastards. So I had to run around like a fool putting it all together and working out how to work the post franking machine, and then dash to the post office to discover that the last post had gone. Bastards. So I feigned ignorance, put it in the post box anyway, then went to the pub. Don't tell!!

2) Pub quiz joke question this week ... What's the difference between a golf ball and a g-spot? To say that this appealed to Team Biscuit's sense of humour would be an understatement! We had to narrow down six proposed answers to one: If you can't find one of them, you get heavily penalised. The other is a golf ball. Boom boom!

3) On a Friday morning, I almost always do the same thing. I set my alarm for 8pm, rather than risk losing my whole day to the duvet, and I go out for breakfast. It means that I'm up, dressed, out, and Doing Something. I usually go to a caff in Tooting (that I've blogged about in the past, but I can't find it, so you'l just have to trust me ... I'm loyal). This Friday, when I went in, the owner greeted me with the phrase, "the usual?", and I made a mental note to order something else next week.

4) I meet up with a friend for lunch, who said he'd take me to a pub that I've heard a lot about, but not been to before. But when we go there it was closed. So we went to a pub that we've been to before, and drank some white wine*. Then some more white wine* ...

5) ... then we went to another pub to meet some friends of mine to watch the football, and drink some more white wine*. Let me know if you can see the point at which the wheels might have dropped off. Anyway, suffice to say that I behaved badly. But sometimes, that's fun, no? So let's move on.

6) I've noticed, since I turned 30, that hangovers don't always behave as they should. So on Saturday I woke up relatively bright, relatively early, and feeling relatively pleased with myself. Possibly also relatively drunk. Cup of tea, shower, and set the coffee machine going, then, whilst I had a chat with a pal on the phone, the hangover swept over me like a wave, forcing me to excuse myself and go back to bed for an hour. Then I woke up and felt fine! Hoorah!

7) So, with hangover tempered, I set off for the fabulous Furzedown fun day on the Rec. What does a girl with a barely concealed smell of white wine* about her person really want? That's right! Three hours working in the information tent, selling arm-bands to small children and saying, "would you like to buy an Eco bag?" over and over and over and over again. Actually, once I got over the initial shock, it was great. All organised by a group of five volunteers, and a few strays (like me), and on a budget of about £2.50, the Rec had transformed magically from a litter-strewn hang out for local teenagers into a full scale festival. There were stalls selling fabulous local creations, and people playing African drums and face painters and plants and cakes and food and drinks and bouncy castles (for up to 13 years old only. NO FUN!) and Punch & Judy and a stage with bands and microphones and lights, for crying out loud, and it was all fabulous!

8) And after that, I was pooped. I came home and made some tea and put a DVD in and then fell asleep half way though and was back in bed about twelve hours after I initially woke up.

9) So since Friday and Saturday had both been such a write off, I had to get down to business on Sunday, doing exciting things like cleaning the bathroom and hoovering the stairs and catching up with some over-due jewellery making. And actually, busying around all day, ticking a series of small items off my "to do" list was oddly cathartic. I have next week off work to Work On The House. I only hope that I have the same sense of purpose then! (The one day of hard work, I mean. Not the two days of drunken stupor!)

10) And to round of the weekend, and because I am a domestic goddess, on Sunday evening I let the pan boil dry whilst cooking beetroot. So now my kitchen looks like someone's been murdered in it, and my nice, useful, medium sized, cook anything in it saucepan has a black and charred kind of a finish to it. RATS!

Well there you go! I did have ten constructive things to say about the weekend after all. Here's hoping that next week is a little more sedate though, eh?

*just typing "white wine" still makes me feel a bit queasy. I think I might be broken. Forever ...

Hats, bags, fizz and horsies

2010-06-16T23:12:00.013+01:00

Oh, what a fabulously lovely and gorgeous day!

You find me tired, a bit tipsy, and sun burnt. But happy!

Too much to tell you everything, so here's just a few of my highlights ...

Gorgeous Jules and I had a lovely leisurely morning, pottering around, getting dolled up, and munching scrambled eggs and smoked salmon for our breakfast, before heading out to meet the girls.

This year I was in a dark maxi dress and quite a big black feather fascinator, which isn't your typical Streatham Common station clobber, and might have raised a few eyebrows. But Jules was something else! Killer electric blue heels, miniskirt, and a head-dress made using 75 peacock feathers, and standing 23 inches (we measured) tall. To say we attracted attention would be an understatement. I shall feel quite dull tomorrow morning, scruffing along in my trousers and flats. I might wear a hat, just for the hell of it.

Anyway, trains, trains, trains, blah, blah, blah, nothing to report, until we picked up a particularly glamorous looking Baglady at Ascot station and our party was complete.

And then really, the day was a blur of champagne, hats, fascinators, gorgeous bags, champagne, racing cards, cardigans, royalty, horses, ice-creams, wins and losses, Union Jacks, champagne, brass bands, sun burn, racing tips, feathers, gusts of wind, Arabs in white suits (very "the man from Del Monte"), Vera Lynn, BBC, tiny little jockeys, and, did I mention, champagne?

Oh, what a lovely, lovely day! Apart from the fact that the combination of sun burn and a strappy dress makes me look like a doily, and the fact that I have to go to work tomorrow, it was perfect. So roll on Ascot 2011!! We're planning a theme of red, white and blue!

Oh, and the Queen, in case you were wondering, was resplendent in red! Gawd love 'er!

This is not a picture of the Queen.

And they're off ...

2010-06-16T00:10:00.012+01:00

Tomorrow I am going to Royal Ascot.

This is the highlight of my social calendar, and a wonderful tradition that I look foward to each year.

I can remember, quite vividly, my first trip with three girlfriends, and the picnic that we hauled into the Silver Ring (the cheap seats). I can remember the sense of daring when placing a £1 each way bet, and the extravagance of the jug of Pimms.

Tomorrow we are a group of six. Three of the originals, one long standing attendee, one back for the second year, and one newbie. But we all embrace the excess these days, spending the weeks before comparing notes on dresses, shoes, and, of course, hats. We will pamper in the morning, arrive around lunchtime, sup champagne all afternoon, and, of course, have a flutter on the horses.

So now my dress (the third that I bought this year in my effort to find just the right thing) is hanging up, still with the price tags on, so that it will feel extra specially new when I put it on in the morning.

My hat sits nestled in its tissue paper bed, having been quietly tried on and posed in several times over, waiting for its Top Of The Bill appearance tomorrow.

And, in this house, we are getting in the swing of things!

Pop back tomorrow, and I'll report back on champagne shenanigans, horse races won and lost, and the colour of the Queen's hat.

Aspiring comedy genius ... The Results!

2010-06-14T20:44:00.003+01:00

So, you might remember that last week I threw down the gauntlet, and invited you answer the question that Team Biscuit had been unable to answer at the pub quiz. You might also remember that I offered a prize to the funniest response.

After Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie featuring the joke on their Radio 2 show last week, and started using it in their nightly trailers, I was overwhelmed with both of your entries. Ha ha!

The question ...

Who is the coolest guy in the hospital?

The gorgeous Baglady suggested that it was the ice surgeon. Ice-surgeon, icesurgeon, eye surgeon. Gettit? I have to give her a big pat on the back because I believe that's the answer gave, and we thought it was funny enough to earn a point. Our question master, alas, disagreed. But I still think it's quite good.

The fabulous Ally over at Today Is My Birthday thought that the coolest guy in the hospital was the one in the morgue. Factually, I believe that she is correct, and whilst it mightn't be in the best taste, I did snort Coke out of my nose when I read it, so it goes to show that some times, tastelessness gets the laugh.

So, eeny meeny miney mo ... Well, I'm torn. But I'm seeing Badlady in the flesh (can you believe?!) on Wednesday, and I'm sure that, if I ply her with champagne, she will understand why I am declaring Ally the winner! Hoorah! Now I just need to buy a prize ...

Oh, and the real answer?

Who is the coolest guy in the hospital?

The ultra-sound guy!

HA HA HA HA!

And who takes over when he's on holiday?

The hip replacement guy!

Thanks very much folks! I'll be here all week!!

Grateful

2010-06-12T00:41:00.002+01:00

I've been grateful three times this week.

I don't mean small-time grateful, like when someone makes you a cup of tea, or when you get a seat on the train, or when it starts raining five minutes after you get back rather than five minutes before. I mean big-style grateful. Like when you realise you're lucky and have to take a big deep breath to think about it.

One of my grateful moments, I wrote about here.

The other two are related.

On Tuesday lunchtime, I popped out at lunchtime to one of my favourite bead shops to pick up some provisions. I needed some things that I know they only keep in the stock room, so I waited for the shop assistant whilst she talked to another customer, but the conversation went on for a while and didn't show signs of slowing, so in the end I shuffled over to see if I could catch someone's eye. As I got closer, I realised that the reason for the delay was that the other customer was deaf, and trying to ask where something was in the shop.

It transpired, after some time, and, in the end, the use of a biro and a sheet of paper, that she was after some silver leather cord. It's no wonder that sign language wasn't getting the message across, is it? I mean, it's not like asking for apples in the greengrocers. It's a fairly specific product, and a fairly hard thing to gesture. She got there in the end, only to discover that they were out of stock, poor love.

I can't imagine that world. I can't imagine the isolation that she must feel by not being able to hear the world around her, or be able to communicate with it. I can't imagine the frustration that she must feel every time she has to carry out anything other than the most simple of transactions, or the gratitude you must feel when you finally get your message across. People say things like, "I would miss the sound of birdsong," or something equally saccharine, but you know what I'd miss? Noise. Plain and simple. I'm sitting here now hearing the sound of the buttons on the computer, the faint purr of the main road, and the occasional car or person on the street outside, a bike's brakes squeaking. Imagine not knowing any of that's going on.

I realise that you only know something's worth having if you've lost it. I don't know this lady's story, obviously, but I do recall a programme a few years ago about a couple who had cochlear implants in their retirement, and were so horrified by the racket that they turned them off and went back to their quiet worlds. Perhaps it's patronising to be sorry for her. But is did make me grateful that, when I wanted to know if there were any spools of black cotton cord in the stock room, I could just ask the question and hear the answer (which was that they were out of stock of that too).

Then on Thursday, I had my third burst of gratitude. My train to work is one of those with two seats on one side of the aisle and three on the other. No-one ever wants the middle seat of the three. There is no way to sit in those seats without getting uncomfortably close to the strangers sitting next to you, and that's terribly un-English. But then, so is standing when there's a seat. You can see the dilemma.

Anyway, I had the aisle seat of the three, and the middle seat remained empty for a couple of stops until a chap came to sit down. I, and the lady in the window seat both did the sharp exhale of breath that is traditional in such circumstance. It's meant to convey (a) a wish that the seat was still empty, and (b) an acceptance that there's no reason why he shouldn't be there. Don't judge me. It's the law of the commuter train. I didn't really take in much of this guy though. I was reading and I tend not to notice much around me before the first coffee.

It was only as the train pulled into Victoria and we all got up to leave that I realised that he had been, I assume, a thalidomide baby - I'd guess he was about ten years older than me, so the timing would be about right. To all effect he had no arms.

As I walked along the platform behind him, I became curious as to how he'd manoeuvre the ticket barriers. Then my thoughts moved on. He was wearing a buttoned shirt and lace up shoes. Did someone help dress him, or is there a way to deal with laces that I've not thought about? And what happens if, midway through the day, he decides he wants a jumper on? Or if he has to blow his nose? What happens when he needs a pee, for crying out loud?

I gripe about the fact that my ankle hurts (although it's hurt for over a year, on and off, and I've not yet seen a doctor about it) and that I'm too fat for my clothes. I gripe if there aren't clean clothes in the morning. I gripe if I dribble toothpaste on the only clean top I have when I'm running late. But my goodness, do I have it easy.

I think that it's the reserve of the comfortable to moan about discomfort. And I think that I am guilty of that myself. And I know that, in all likelihood, I will be ungrateful and moaning about my comfortable life in the near future. But for now, I will try and keep in mind how lucky I am to really have nothing to complain about.

And ...

2010-06-11T00:29:00.004+01:00

... relax.

What a week!

What.

A.

Week!

I am very lucky to have a great job again. A job that reminds me why I chose this career which is, if I'm honest, a bit nerdy, but which I am good at and which I have an instinct for and which I love.

My old job sucked. The actual role was the same as that in my current place, but the job? Well that was poles apart. I spent my life smiling at people I knew bitched about me behind my back (well ... they bitched about everyone else, so I assume they did about me too), pleading with people to tell me what they were doing before I heard it from a third party, repeating myself, being sworn at by my boss, and dealing with an overwhelming apathy from my colleagues. Every day was like walking through mud. Every week was agonisingly exhausting.

But you know how it is. When you do something every day, you don't notice that it's not normal anymore.

This week has been frantic. I had a "to do" list (I do like a list) of eight things that, whatever else happened, I HAD to get done this week. Well. Lots else happened. Loads of things came to a head this week, so there were letters and letters and letters, notes to clients, emails and phone calls and more letters, and each thing went to the top of the list and the eight things dropped down it. And to boot, we are working on a really exciting project with a client which, if it comes off, will be a-maz-ing, but which, in the mean time, is a black hole for time.

So today I found myself dealing with things for our big exciting project, dealing with the things that came in, dealing with the "to do" list (still seven items long this morning), answering the phones, and generally chasing my tail.

And in the midst of it, when I was having a little banter with my colleagues in a spare thirty seconds, it struck me how much more fun it is to be busy beyond compare at the new place, than it was to fight fire at the old, and how lucky I am to be there, and be able to enjoy the thrill of the chase again. I celebrated my half-anniversary there this week. And I can't wait to enjoy the next six months. But in the mean time, BOY am I ready for the weekend!

I am a crafty devil

2010-06-09T22:38:00.002+01:00

Recently, on a weekend at my parents house, shortly before I left to drive home, I went out into the garden with a large hardback book (Physics for the Enquiring Mind, if you were wondering), some sheets of A4, and a pair of scissors. I proceeded to work my way around the garden, cutting off attractive leaves here, flower heads there, and pressing them all carefully in the book.

Mother came to check on what I was doing, and when I told her, she rolled her eyes. "I rather thought you'd have grown out of all this by now," she said. "You were always a begger for the cutting and sticking."

When I was a child my favourite toys weren't toys at all, but crafty things. Tubes of glue and glitter and stickers and scissors and coloured cardboard. Oh, I loved it! And she's right, I haven't grown out of it. I get new ideas for sticking things and sewing and cutting all the time, and rarely get the time to put them into practice. The pressed flowers are for some greetings cards that I want to make for an arty event later in the year, but I've not yet got out the card to see what I've got supplies of.

I've also got designs on some little mother-of-pearl buttons at the moment, that I'd like to turn into some kind of door hangings, and of course, I always have loads of jewellery to make up. Oh, there's just so much to do!

But a while ago, the lovely Gillian taught me a new technique that I spent some time on at the crafting event that we ran last weekend. It's compelling and wonderful, and I challenge you, once you know what it is, not to try it yourself.

What you do is this: Take plastic carrier bags, cut them to make a design or pattern or picture, and lay it out, as you want it to be, on a sheet of greaseproof paper. Lay another sheet of greaseproof paper over the top, and iron the lot (quite a cool iron, all over, but not letting it sit too long anywhere. Like when you're ironing your delicates). Now, this is important ... don't try it without the greaseproof paper under and over the bags. Otherwise you'll end up with carrier bag melted onto your ironing board, or your iron, or both. Trust me. It doesn't come off!

The whole lot melts slightly and fuses together. No glue or tape or pins. Just plastic and heat. It's marvellous! And VERY addictive!

At the weekend, the kids who were trying their hand at it were largely producing pictures of flowers (primarily because that was one of the examples that we made up in advance, I suspect), but we've also tried weaving two colours together to make a sort of matting. Here's the thing though - you could, in theory, make ANYTHING! Gillian told of a lady who'd made herself a rain mac. Could be myth, but has the potential to be true, and it's this potential that MAKES ME WANT TO TRY IT!

In the mean time, I think that I'll satisfy myself with making some bunting for the front of the house (Sainsbury's orange flags ironed onto an Ocado purple cord, I think). But the sky's the limit!

And whilst you're ironing yourself some bags, you can give some thought to the punchline to my competition joke from Monday's post. Come along now. Don't be shy!

Aspiring comedy genius?

2010-06-07T21:00:00.002+01:00

Each week, at the pub quiz, there is a joke.

We are given the joke, and we have to come up with the punchline. Funniest gets a point.

Usually we can work our way to the answer through a combination of word-play and luck. Unfortunatly this week this techniqe failed us. We did not get the point. We were not amused.

So, I thought I'd give you the joke and let you give me the punchline. Send me a comment with your proposed punchline.

In fact, I will send a prize to the funniest person (based on the punchline. Anything else would be rude) which I have yet to acquire, but which will TOTALLY be worth the effort of commenting!

Here it is. Are you ready?

Q: Who is the coolest man in the hospital?

I'll post up the actual answer next Monday, along with the prizewinner.

Have fun!!

This Weekend (10) ...

2010-06-06T22:27:00.005+01:00

... has been very much a weekend of two halves.

The good bits have been superb, but the bad pretty flaming ghastly.

So instead of my usual ten point chronology of my weekend, I'll give you an alternating rant and rave on a theme of why it's foul and fabulous to live here.

Let's start with a bit of fabulous. It's good to start on a high note, don't you think?

So, on Friday afternoon I was cleaning the car. Yup! Me! Bucket and sponge. Amazing, no? Well believe it or not, that's not the fabulous bit. A neighbour walked past and commented, as is the neighbourly way, that I could make a start on hers when I was finished. She's a lady I've seen around a bit over the eleven months that I've lived here, but never been introduced to. Whilst we exchanged pleasantries my next-door-neighbour, and a friend from book club also came by. The four of us stood, chatting about mutual friends, connections, gossip, rumour, events and news. By the time we parted company twenty minutes later, I'd offered to help organise a street party and joined the local Neighbourhood Watch group. Not, it transpires, a moment too soon.

On Friday evening, I settled in for the night with a cuppa and a DVD. By the end of the trailers, the noise from outside was unbearable.

Next-door-but-one lives a single mother and her teengaged son. She's OK. A bit rough, and fond of a can of Special Brew, but essentially OK. Her son, on the other hand, is out of control. He's 17, has left school, and does nothing but hang around with his live-in girlfriend and about ten of their mates. There are local theories about how they all make money, but these are 80% speculation, so let's not dwell. They are also thought to be at the centre of the majority of local "incidents", but whilst most people know this, oddly no-one ever witnesses anything. Generally, they are trouble. They have taken, of late, to hanging around on a Friday and Saturday evening on the front wall of mine, and my neighbour's house, drinking, smoking, and talking unintelligibly.

As the decibel level rose on Friday, I got up to close the window, and as I did so, I realised that, as well as sitting on my wall, they were sitting on my car. Five teenaged boys, all six feet tall and more, sitting on my tiny little car. Ooh, I was mad! But what to do? I was scared to confront them, but also scared not to. What to do, what to do?

We have a very good local police team. The Met have set up Safer Neighbourhood Teams, designed to deal with these small groups who operate on a local level. Our local team is second to none. But at 10pm, all I got was an answering service, so I left a message and dithered some more. Finally, after a lot of counting to ten, I decided not to let the buggers intimidate me. I opened the door and told them to get off the car and my front wall. Sulkily, then all hitched along to my neighbour's wall and car. I pointed out that this wasn't really what I meant. "Do you have nothing better to do than sit on our front walls all night?" "No." What more was there to say?

Within five minutes though, they'd thought of something else to do. They started chasing around the cars, jumping over bonnets and throwing any missile that came to hand. They fought in the street - play fighting at first, until someone threw too well timed a punch, and it escalated. One lad found a fence post and started waving it around, until it bored him and he threw it along the street. And then as quickly as it started, it stopped. They scattered; some left, some right, and some back into the house, and five minutes later the police arrived. A suspicious person would think that they knew they were on the way. There ensued a row on the street ("I know my rights!" "Show me your warrant!" "This isn't "The Bill", sir," etc etc etc) before everyone moved inside and things calmed down.

On Friday night, nine people on my street called 999, and I only left an answer phone message! Rats! At least I now know how to get results. The neighbourhood has now become "them" (the family at number 23 and associated gang members) and "us" (everyone else, plus the police), and none of us can see how life will get better without getting markedly worse first.

It's a huge frustration to me, and, it seems, the police force, that we all have to wait for a disaster to happen before anyone can really do anything. Petty crime, intimidation, a level of vandalism and antisocial behaviour will make this street a hard place to live for the foreseeable future, but until the Police can pin something good on one or two of them, there's nothing that can really be done. Meanwhile we all live in the knowledge that a stabbing, a beating, or worse, is a constant possibility, and can only sit back and wait for it to happen. Deary me. Where will it end?

Anyway. Yesterday dawned bright, sunny, and with such an air of positivity that it was hard to believe the unpleasantness of the night before was any more than a dream. As I left the house, a neighbour who I say hello to but don't really know also stepped out of her house. Bonded now by our respective observations of the night before, we chatted for a while, and as we parted ways, we both commented that every cloud has a silver lining. Civil war on the street has drawn the rest of us closer together. We're going for a drink this week.

Later in the day I helped a friend set up the opening event of the Furzedown Festival - a crafting event for children in a local community centre. I spent a happy, if exhausting three hours showing people how to make pictures and bunting out of carrier bags (it's MUCH more impressive and much less crappy than it sounds. I might give you a step by step guide to the most fun you can have with greaseproof paper, if you play your cards right) and marvelled at the fact that if you unplug children from their Playstations, and give them some buttons and glue and fabric and colouring pens, they are as happy as Larry (whoever he is).

So there you have it. In one weekend I have seen battle lines drawn in the street with such purpose that I can't see how the next few months won't be vicious and dreadful, and yet am warmed yet again by the wonderful sense of community that this place has over any other in London. I tell you ... you have to love this place, or it'd drive you mad!

Ungood English #5

2010-06-01T21:00:00.001+01:00

It's been a while since we had a dose of Ungood English, hasn't it?

That's not to say that there hasn't been any, but I haven't seen any really choice examples when I've had my camera to hand, and been quick enough with it.

Yesterday, I saw this from the top deck of the bus.

Now. Firstly, and most importantly (and I am aware that I've said this before. A lot) if you're paying serious money to have your shop sign made up, RUN A SPELL CHECK FIRST! Really, people! If you're buying a car, you test drive it and look under the bonnet. If you're buying a bed, you lie on it and bounce up and down a bit. If you're buying a new shop sign, GET SOMEONE ELSE TO READ IT AND TELL YOU IF IT'S RIGHT!

But there are other underlying issues. I should say, for clarity's sake, that I haven't set foot inside Glamourous [sic] Nails and Beauty so I can't actually account for how glamourous (...) or otherwise it is, but as a rule, I think that if you have to write it on the outside of your shop, you are probably trying too hard to convince everyone.

There used to be a shop on Piccadilly called Posh. Seriously. Posh. They sold "leather effect" jackets and PVC trousers. Not in a kinky way. Just in a tasteless way. Every time I went past I wondered, do the owners really think it's posh? Or do they think that punters will be lulled into a false sense of security? Or are they being funny? Who knows. All I do know is that posh, it was not.

Whether a shop is posh or glamourous (!) is surely in the eye of the beholder. Otherwise wouldn't all shops be called "Nice Clothes" or "Comfy Sofas" or "Delicious Food". You call a shop, "Glamorous" then it's got a lot to live up to.

You call a shop, "Glamourous," you've pretty well managed everyone's expectations. So maybe they've got it right after all.

This Weekend (9) ...

2010-05-31T21:47:00.003+01:00

... was a long one! (Oh, err, missus!)

Of course, because this is England, it was grey and drizzly and not as warm as it could be, but that doesn't mean that it wasn't marvellous. I mean. A long weekend IS a long weekend. And here's what happened.

1) I was on time for the pub quiz! On time! That's note worthy in itself, but I suspect that anyone not used to my poor time keeping won't be wowed by that. The thing is that not only was I on time, but I was also useful. I was not a spare wheel who played the role of "nodding dog" at the end of the table whilst other people supplied the right answers, as I am most weeks, but I was a useful, question answering, information supplying team member. As such I can confirm that Mr Tickle is orange, post boxes in Spain are yellow, and that the punchline to the Joke Of The Week is "The stakes are too high!" (Chuckle chuckle).

2) The Lovely Gillian couldn't make the quiz (which is not good news, obviously) because she and her husband, The Equally Lovely Garry are fostering a weeny baby girl (which is good news). A baby (a proper weeny crinkly squeaky baby, I mean. Not one of these part-baked small people, but a small, one-week-old baby) must, if you are a foster carer, be the gold at the end of the rainbow, and I am just thrilled for them. I've not yet had the chance to go around for a cuddle (the baby and Gillian), but when I go, I'll obviously be smitten (with the baby and Gillian).

3) Whilst normally, on Friday, I set the alarm for a decent time and hop (fall) out of bed bright and early (slowly and resentfully) this week I decided that I needed a snooze, so I allowed myself the luxury of a lie in. I was woken by a text message from Amelia, wondering if I fancied Doing Lunch. well if that isn't the whole point of not working on a Friday, I don't know what is! So I hot footed to Sainsbury's and bought a multitude of fabulous nice things, and we decided to just graze on cheese, bread and tomatoes in the garden, with copious amounts of coke. And. We. Were. Happy!

4) There were a few things that I tried to do on Friday afternoon, but none really came off, so, tapping in on a bit of found time, I cleared out my bedroom, pulling everything out of all my cupboards and drawers, throwing away holey socks and grey pants, and putting chunky jumpers away for the summer. My room is now as ordered as it can be, given that I don't actually have any bedroom furniture still, and I know where everything is. A miracle!!

5) Saturday was the greyest of grey days. I am going on a swanky day out in a couple of weeks time (more to follow) for which I need a new frock, so I decided I'd hit Kingston and shop, shop, shop. By the time I got off from the bus stop to the town centre, the rain had socked up my jeans to the knees, and down my hair, sticking it to my forehead. Hard, under the circumstances, to think "GLAMOUR." I tried on a heap of things, but struggled to see myself promenading, champagne in hand, in any of them, so in the end bought some pick and mix and a lottery ticket and came home. Oh well. Maybe next time.

6) Amelia's smallest, the fabulous G, made a request for a sleepover at my house some time ago, and arrangement which would offer him and me a bit of playing time, and his mother a bit of quality time with her fella, Curtis. I collected him and we came home to watch DVDs and eat biscuits. (Coraline was ok, but Planet 51 was ace). In the kitchen, whilst cooking his tea, G let out a small fart, and looked at me in a challenging way. "Aren't you going to say "excuse me"?" "Curtis never does."

7) Eurovision. The annual battle of wills. I say I won't watch it ever year. It's truly dreadful. But then I click on, just for a minute, and end up watching to the end. Poor old England. Poor old us. Last position. Again. Poor old us.

8) Sunday lunchtime on a bank holiday weekend is, surely, the most luxurious time in the world. I met with some friends for lunch at a pub in Wimbledon to watch the football, have a drink and enjoy a long lunch. One thing lead to another. And I got home at 11pm. Pah well. It's a long weekend. What's a girl to do?

9) So I had a slow start to today. A nice big stodgy breakfast and a long chat with my mother on the blower. And then a nice walk to The Rookery, a secret (not very secret) garden at the top of Streatham Common with a friend, before retiring to the pub and setting the world to rights. I'm sure that Bank Holidays are meant to be about more wholesome pursuits than quenching a hangover with Merlot, but it works for me.

10) And now, as I type this, I watch Glee. I know it's trashy, and teeny, and all, but it's becoming my dirty little secret. Why was there no Glee club when I was at school? Bugger that! Why isn't there a Glee club in Tooting now?! Perhaps it can be my new project.

Time Flies

2010-05-29T22:57:00.003+01:00

This afternoon, sitting on the top deck of the number 57 bus, and gawping at the view, I realised that I was inadvertently tuning into the conversation of someone sitting a few rows behind me.

You know the type. They are typically not very interesting, but talk in a loud voice about things that they presumably think make them sound profound, interesting, clever, and possibly even attractive. This boy's conversation did none of the above for him. Shame.

He was saying to the poor suckers he was talking at, "it's, like, totally amazing, ain't it? Like, two years ago we were leaving school and stuff and now everyone's, like 18 and that, and everyone's getting, like, drunk all the time, and it's wicked and it's, like, amazing that it's two whole years already, ain't it?" This theme went on for about twenty minutes without pausing long enough for his audience to comment on whether it was, like, amazing or not. And all that time I wanted to walk to the back of the bus and shake him.

I didn't want to shake him because he was irritating (although he was) but because he had no idea that two years in is nothing to how, like, amazing it gets.

Two measly years! Two years during which time most of them will have been in some form of higher education anyway, to numb the effect of entering the real world. Pah!

It's almost fifteen years since I left school. Now that IS amazing. Amazing to me, anyway, since it really seems like it could have been just a couple of (admittedly busy) years ago. I can remember elements of my school with such very vivid clarity that it's a surprise to me each time I remember that I've been out of school for longer than I was at school now.

I met up recently with a girl I was at school with between the ages of 13 and 18, who I haven't seen for at least three years, and we were still making the same jokes as we were when we were 17. In many ways, it was like not time had passed.

But time has passed. Things have moved on. If Matey-boy on the bus is alarmed at how things change between the ages of 16 and 18, he's going to get quite light headed with what happens between the ages of 30 and 33. In those intervening years between us, we have celebrated three wedding anniversaries, had two children, rented two flats, sold one house and bought two new ones, held four jobs, been on countless first dates, had one grim medical diagnosis, and reduced our working weeks to an average of 3.5 days. And those are just the main headlines. Heavens knows what happened that we failed to mention to one another.

Seeing people like this has a profound effect on me. I come away feeling positive about the good news, sad about the bad news, warm and fuzzy and the friendliness of it all, and mildly depressed at the list of news I didn't have; the husbands and children that I can't talk about.

So THAT is why I wanted to shake this dumb-ass 18 year old. I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and tell him to stop banging on about how amazing it is that stuff is happening to other people, and to get on with doing some stuff himself. I wanted to smack his loud-mouthed chops and tell him to stop being wowed by the fact that his newly-of-age friends are able to get drunk and take note of the fact that RIGHT NOW they are meeting people who they might or might not marry, and might or might not have children with, but who will, without question, be significant in their respective life stories. I wanted to tell him to take decisions seriously, because you don't get the chance to make a lot of them a second time. I wanted to tell him that he should never regret doing something, he should only regret not doing it, and that no-one ever had a better life by saying no to new things. I wanted to tell him to look at how he feels now about the last two years and multiply that by twenty and think how he'll feel about this time when he's cruising towards his retirement.

But most of all, I wanted to tell him that hearing his too-loud conversation had made me realise that I should do all of these things myself, and see if, in three years time, when I run into an old friend, I feel more like my achievements make me proud.

As Ferris Buellar says, life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

How to be hot

2010-05-24T22:02:00.004+01:00

It always strikes me as funny, in these first few days of a new season, that everyone forgets what to do with the new clime.

Today, inevitably, the temperature in the office started creeping up until, around mid morning, it was decidedly sticky. "I'm so hot I can't think," moaned one of the partners. "I don't know what to do with myself. I need to do something to cool down." There was a pause. We all looked at him, waiting to see what he was going to do. He looked at his watch and said, "oh look! Time for elevenses. I'll put the kettle on! Tea all 'round?"

An hour later, it was hotter. We all slouched at our desks fanning ourselves with property journals and leases. (Well ... they have to be useful for something!) Having not yet done a full 12 months in our office, I still find, from time to time, that I don't know where things are, but I assume my longer serving colleagues do. I caught the eye of one, and wondered whether we ought to dip into petty cash to buy some fans. "Oh, we've got loads of fans," he said, hopping from his seat and darting around the office pulling desk fans from cupboards and drawers that I didn't even knew existed. When five fans were propelling a clammy breeze wafted through the office, he pottered back to his desk explaining that he'd forgotten that we had the means of cooling down.

People's general attire is also a bit wonky still. I went for a short walk at lunchtime, and spent my time gawping (perhaps in an indiscreet manner) at people's clothes, and realised that I wasn't the only person to wake up this morning and realise that I couldn't remember what to wear on a hot day at work. People in the queue ahead of me at the sandwich bar distractedly tugged at the hems of skirts too short for non-tight-wearing legs, and hot feet were slipped out of heavy shoes. Men, used to putting on their suit jackets to leave the office, fidgeted awkwardly, not yet used to the more causal dress code which we can enjoy for the next few months. Summer skirts and winter jackets, floral frocks and big boots, or ... worst of all sins ... open toed shoes and tights! AAAGGGHHH!

No-one seems quite comfortable enough to fully embrace the summer yet. But this afternoon, as I cast my eyes around an office of people all sitting at their desks devouring ice-lollies, I got the feeling that it wouldn't take us long to get the hang of things.

This Weekend (8) ...

2010-05-23T23:35:00.003+01:00

It. Has. Been. Glorious!
I have basically fallen from food to sun to food in sun to food and sun, so this post might get a bit samey.

1) Thursday was a write off. The Boss turned 60 last week, so we went for lunch to celebrate, and that was really the end of the day. It was good to all let our hair down together, in the knowledge that the only people expecting us to go back to the office were also letting their hair down. Everyone around the table had a story about drunkenness turned bad. One involved naked sleepwalking in a hotel. Another involved sitting on a lumpy sofa at a new girlfriend's house, only to discover that he was actually sitting on the (now deceased) family cat.

2) Friday morning dawned bright and sunny, and my mood with it. I had a tentative plan for coffee with a girlfriend which didn't materialise, but being as I'd made an effort to wear clothes that were not just clean, but also fitted (a rare treat) I took myself to a favourite cafe for brunch, with a good book and no mobile phone, and only felt slightly guilty that I wasn't doing something more productive.

3) On Friday night I had some girlfriends around for a curry and a gossip. Living here has given me the chance to meet some fabulous ladies and make some great friends. As the fabulous Amelia observes, we're turning into a right little local gang! (By the way, you can sign up for her next experimental art e-course here) All was going well until a friend of hers popped around as we finished dinner to collect something from her, stayed for a quick drink, and left at 4am, by which time the wheels had well and truely fallen off. Of deary me!!

4) So if goes without saying that Saturday started slowly. Plans to go to the local school boot fair and plant sale went to pot, whilst I wallowed, hungover, in my pit and felt sorry for myself. A cocktail of nurofen, Twinings detox tea, and two more hours sleep was enough to prize me out of bed and into the shower, which in turn was enough to get me into the kitchen and making a jug of coffee, and after about a litre of that, I was able to face the day.

5) By that point, I'd pretty much decided that the best way to spend the day was to sit in the garden with a book and a bottle of diet coke, so that's exactly what I did. I didn't make the jewellery that I was meant to make, or clean my car, or put away my winter clothes, or paint the dining room furniture, or write to my friend or anything. I just sat. And read. And sunned. And enjoyed it.

6) Lovely Sophie and Lovely Steve (a lovely couple) invited me and three lovely friends around for dinner on Saturday. It was, as you might glean, lovely. We sat in their garden, eating barbecue and the salads that Jules and Lewis had brought, then the Eton mess that I took, and drank the pink prosecco that Matthew took (well ... I drank more coke ...) and nattered the night away.

7) With an existing arrangement to see my oldest friend in the world for lunch today, on impulse I sent a message to another old friend from our gang to see if he'd like to join us. Ten minutes later he called to say that he was on his way. I was still in my pyjamas, eating my breakfast, and got ready at break-neck speeds!

8) Sitting in the garden with Andy, reading the papers, and waiting for Angela to join us, we chatted about mutual friends, plans for forthcoming social engagements, and sometimes, nothing at all.

9) And later, with Angela, we sat around talking about her newly announced pregnancy, the terrible terrible names some people give their babies, new houses, knitting patterns and the market for maternity bridesmaid dresses. And sometimes we talked about nothing at all.

10) So now, here we are again, at Sunday evening. Slow, easy films on the telly, a warm breeze chasing through the house from the open lounge window to the open kitchen door,and a cup of tea by my side. And now ... to bed. G'night.

The Totally Tropical Taste

2010-05-22T17:24:00.007+01:00

My Great Aunt Marjorie, a wise, and very Welsh woman, once observed that she really liked the seasons. Just as you get bored of one, the next one comes along, and it makes life interesting. She also believes in the Billy Connolly principle that there's no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong sort of clothes.

Did I say wise? Sorry. I meant to say that she's a wraig yn wyllt (a batty lady). No such thing as bad weather?! She lives in Wales for crying out loud! It starts raining as you roll off the Severn Bridge, and doesn't let up. How green is my valley? Pretty fricking green, given the rate of annual rainfall! No, no, no. G.A.M. and I do NOT have the same views on seasons!

Winter, to me, is like purgatory. One depressingly short, dark, gloomy, cold, wet, icy, day after another. From November to February each year my life revolves around glamorous combinations of chunky knit cardigans, fleecy lined slippers, thermal socks, scarves and chilblains. I hate it. It makes me extremely grumpy. I believe most seriously that hibernation would be a good option. Just imagine leaving work on 31st October, saying, "see you in March then folks!" then going home to dig up your nuts (!) and snuggle under the 13 tog for four months. Bliss. I really don't see many flaws with this plan.

The summer though? The summer, I love. Just knowing that it's summer makes me happier and feel more optimistic about life, the universe and everything.

I love having the windows thrown open around the house, and being able to hear the day outside. Being woken by the sound of weekend DIY and gardening, and children playing on the street is a great thing. And the other sounds of summer - the sound of the radio playing in the kitchen three doors along, and the occasional strain floating over the fence (currently, "a Whiter Shade of Pale,"), the chatter of birds singing, the gentle ssshhhhhhh of the wind in the willow tree in the school yard behind my house all make up for a beautifully warm sound. Not to mention the unmistakable, and extremely English sound of the ice-cream van tinkling it's way around neighbouring streets.

And doesn't the summer taste nice? Strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, nom, nom, nom. Rose wine and Pimms. Ice lollies and the mysteriously named 99's. Asparagus and corn on the cob. I'm going for dinner this evening with friends. They are supplying the barbecue, and am supplying the pudding - an obscene bowl of Eton Mess which I keep dunking my finger (ok ... a spoon) in to make sure the mix is right.

Everything, in fact, is a sensory adventure. The dibble-inducing smell of next-door-but-one's lunchtime barbecue was almost too much. The sticky smell of sun lotion on warm skin, and the boiled sweets left in the car too long. Delicious! The feeling of lying between sheets that have been line dried is divine. The way the sun shines through leaves on a tree is a finer spectacle than any stained glass window.

So I'm writing this now sitting at the table at the end of my garden, listening to my neighbours music and chat, and the thud, thud of the kid next door kicking his ball against the wall. I'm gazing at the sky and wondering if I could get a dress made in that particular, almost pearlescent shade of blue, and I'm distracted by the arcing swoops of a lone swallow, loop-the-looping over the houses. In a second, before I get ready to go out, I'll water the garden, and the air will be filled for a while with the sweet smell of dry-damp earth.

And the best thing? Tomorrow I get to do it all again. I'm in heaven!

Sssshhhhh ...

2010-05-18T22:38:00.005+01:00

You remember that I was having a German houseguest?

And you remember that I was a little nervous about it?

I am, by nature, a solitary creature. I wallow in being a bit antisocial. The whole German-stranger-in-the-house-for-two-weeks thing was a terrible mistake.

Anyway, she has been, and stayed, and now has left and gone home.

For two weeks, there has been someone here when I've got home in the evening, and someone asleep in the next room when I've woken up in the morning. For two weeks, I've tiptoed out in the mornings, and rushed home in the evenings. For two weeks someone has been eating out of my fridge and using my shampoo. For two weeks, the TV has hardly been switched on to make room instead for language non-specific music. For two weeks two phones, two laptops have jostled for time at the charger, and two people have jostled for time in the bathroom.

For two weeks, a person in my house with limited language skills has asked me to explain what words mean. Really. Try explaining "congestion" without saying, "it's when something's congested." It's tricky. Try explaining what the word, "tainted" (context: Tainted Love by Soft Cell) means. And the meaning of the phrase, "Bob's your uncle," was lost entirely.

And another thing. How do you describe Marmite? Or crumpets? Or The Proms? Or bonfire night? How do you explain why Gordon Brown does that thing with his mouth when he talks? Or why the Duke of Norfolk lives in Sussex and the Duke of Westminster lives in Cheshire?

All things considered, I have been looking forward to tonight, and to having my home back, my telly on, my phone charging, my choice of words unquestioned, and to being able to go to the loo with the door open (as is my wont). Don't get me wrong - she's a sweet girl and all, but she has been a sweet girl living in my house. A cockoo in my nest, if you will. And it has vexed me to have to compromise my life and my routine and my antisocial selfish ways for her.

So tell me, then, why does the house seem so very empty tonight? Why is it that the silence of the house is screaming at me? And why do the rooms seem so big? And why am I still locking the bathroom door?

This Weekend (7) ...

2010-05-16T23:23:00.004+01:00

I feel a little like I've just bowled from one "This Weekend" to another this week, such has been the franticness (franticity? Francosity?) of the week. Still, here we are again ...

1) A rare thing. A Thursday night with no quiz. Calamity!! But it means that I can accept a request from the lovely Amelia to babysit for her little boy for a couple of hours. I collect him from a mutual friend's house, where he and her husband are perched on the sofa, wrapped in a game of Super Mario. Unable to distract either of them, I settle in the armchair to wait, and realise after a while that I'm equally absorbed. "Try spin jumping on that box," I suggest, and realise that I've become one of them!

2) Having wrestled Small Boy away from the Wii controls, and home, I successfully cajole him into his pyjamas and then into bed. When his mother gets home, we are snuggled in bed together whilst he reads me a story about talking crocodiles. I'm not sure who's more surprised by the scene of calm - her or me!

3) After a good gossip with Amelia (we specialise, when together, at setting the world to rights in record time), I run home to meet gorgeous Gillian to talk over a new crafting project that she's got in mind for us. A quick yak-yak-yak, and we settle to the job in hand, and quickly agree a rough format, some early promotional activities, and points of action. (Nothing more on this for now, but watch this space!) How lovely to work on a project with someone of the same no-nonsense attitude as me!

4) Last week was a fairly busy one, and made more tiring by having started the week on a terrible Sunday night's sleep. Normally Friday mornings have a strict getting-up time, but this weekend I treat myself to a lie in. What luxury to wake up after normal work start time, and be able to dig down under the duvet for an extra mini-doze. When I finally haul myself out of bed I feel fully rested for the first time in a week. Bliss!

5) After a quick breakfast with a friend and her husband, we discover that we all need a trip to the local DIY and garden centre, so I offer them a lift. My car, a Figaro, is technically a four seater, but the back seat is really little more than a shelf. The trip there is cosy. The trip home however is nothing short of farcical - three tall people, three sacks of compost, one large potted begonia, five empty plant pots, one pair of long-handled tree loppers, and assorted other goodies all get stacked, in strict order, in my tiny car, to the huge amusement of others in the car park.

6) As soon as I'm home, I pull on my mucky old jeans and a floppy t-shirt, and hit the garden. With the radio on, the time flies, and weeding seems like no kind of chore before the more interesting digging, potting, planting starts. I now have four tomato plants, two pepper, five beans and four strawberries in pots and beds, ready to be coaxed into baring fruit. Plans for fruit trees and raspberry canes next year abound! Has anyone ever been truly self sufficient from a terrace house garden, I wonder? Would a couple of chickens be a bridge too far?

7) Early Saturday morning I head south for a weekend with fab friends in Arundel. Last week was my dearest friend's birthday, so a trip has long been on the cards. It's a familiar journey on a route that the car can almost do for itself, and it strikes me on the way that going to visit them is almost as much like coming home as going to my own family's home.

8) The planned birthday celebration is a trip to the Drive In. Yes ... you read correctly. Plumpton Racecourse, for one night only, is turned into the All American drive in, with a showing of Grease being the main attraction. Five girls pack into the car to watch a film that we've seen 100 times before, and we chat amiably as we watch. Once in a while someone sings a few bars, or comments on fashions, or the fact that a school of 17 year olds all look around our age. After a time, H. observes, "this is definitely the most random thing I've ever done." All parties agree.

9) For the first time in all my trips to West Sussex, this morning we head for Arundel Castle. My friend's husband explains, "these days, the family only live in that wing," indicating a building which my whole house would comfortably fit inside about thirty times over. "They had to scale down," he says, with no hint of humour. We speculate on whether we could cope with a life living in a castle ourselves, and whether we can recreate the image of the dining hall in our own dining rooms. The idea of this building having been a home for nearly 1000 years is wonderfully overwhelming.

10) The first open meeting for this year's Wandsworth Artist's Open House took place this evening, largely to drum up support and participants, but also to gauge feeling about more promotion of local events this year. Three new attendees got the buzz going - how lovely to have found new people in our wee community to take part in such a lovely event (and selfishly, how lovely to have found three new potential friends!) and enthusiasm for this year's even abounds. I've found myself wondering this evening how to tone down the enthusiasm for a couple of weeks yet (the event isn't until October) but also that having too many ideas is a fairly lovely problem to have!

There's good news, and there's bad news

2010-05-10T23:21:00.002+01:00

The good news first, of course.

I have a new computer! Hoorah! I'm typing on it now. What do you think? Smart, isn't it?

I have treated myself to a lovely wee HP Mini. The Nice Man in John Lewis asked me if I'd like it in Gordon Brown red or David Cameron blue. Then he told me that they were out of red so I'd have to have blue. We both sniggered at the symbolism.

The bad news, however, is that nothing much happened today, so I don't really have anything to blog about. You'll just have to be happy at the arrival of the mini-puter, and rest assured that normal service will be resumed.

This weekend (6) ...

2010-05-10T00:19:00.003+01:00

It's been a wee while since I did a "this weekend" post. Partly the demise of the dino-puter, partly the fact that there has been one thing more interesting to write about than lots of small things together, and partly because I was paranoid about being stuck in a rut. But I've decided that I rather like the format, so I think that I'll pick it up again and flog it a while longer!

So. This weekend ...

1) Thursday night, as regular readers will know, is quiz night at The Furzedown, where Team Biscuit regularly attends, and often fares well. A new quirk in the scoring means that the gap between first and second is now often wider - the too-complicated-to-explain "risky round" rules making the difference between good luck and good judgement. This week we came second. My role ... very much making up the numbers!

2) After the quiz, back to the lovely Gillian's house to watch the election results come rolling in. I have been repeatedly angered in the run up to this election, not by the propaganda of the political parties, but by the mind tricks and bullying of the voting public. Friends and neighbours - people I'd have counted amongst the more open minded and free thinking people I know - have foisted their political views on the world around them with such belligerence that I have, on many occasions, had to hold my tongue in the face of ignorance, arrogance, and down right lying. I was brought up to believe that everyone was entitled to their own views on religion and politics, and yet to some, the definition of democracy seems to have been altered along the way to "do what you want, as long as you do it my way." Thankfully, the group clustered around BBC1 on the night of the 6th, and the morning of the 7th, was a cheerful and upbeat one. Political allegiances didn't come up in conversation, but comments like, "I think he's a bit creepy," and, "she shouldn't have worn that skirt," abounded.

3) After a veeeeery late night on Thursday, I had foolishly booked a 9am hair appointment for Friday. Yuk! But, on so little sleep, it was thoroughly lovely to be pampered by Crazy Martin. He knows the format now. He asks what I want, I shrug and grin at him, and he sets to with colours and foils and scissors, and creates something a bit different every time. I am now very short (and therefore straight) on one side, and longer and curly on the other, and am peppered with scarlet highlights. Ohh la la!! As I left, he called after me, "next time, we go blond!" and I laughed nervously.

4) My German (not Swiss, it transpires) houseguest is now here, and enjoying all that London has to offer. But on Friday evening, neither of us had the energy for a big night out, so we settled instead for dinner at one of my favourite restaurants. Tooting is possibly the most unlikely place on the planet for a good, authentic Japanese restaurant, but there it is. I've not had an excuse to go there for ages, and it was deeeeeeeelicious! Thoroughly stuffed with sushi, noodles, fried tofu, and chicken, we chatted about all sorts, and had a thoroughly lovely evening.

5) Saturday morning saw me leap (fall) out of bed bright and (hideously) early to head to my parent's place in Kent. A friend has given me a new route which I tried for the first time. Escaping the maze that is South London can be torture, but the new route avoids all the pinch points, and feels like a well kept secret as I head south-east, without getting snarled up once. A small pleasure, but somehow also a massive one!

6) First job on arrival ... get mother to the garage to pick up her New Car! Let me hear you say "Oooooooh!" She has been driving the same Corsa for nine years, and threatening to buy a new one for three. Two weeks ago it blew up on the dual carriageway and forced the issue. She is now the proud owner of a not-quite-new Polo, and is very much in love with it. Repeatedly over the weekend, she used phrases like, "I have to pop to the supermarket for a few things tomorrow ... in my New Car!" and, "what's that blue thing on the drive? Oh, it's my New Car!" I am extremely jealous, but any suggestion I made that I "borrow" it fell on deaf ears.

7) The weather all weekend is thoroughly dreadful. Cold, windy and rainy, as you might expect from a weekend in November. The heating went on, along with spare socks, cardigans, and the telly. My brother and his lovely girl were also visiting this weekend, and it was quite lovely to be limited by the weather to spending time with them, even if we were just loafing.

8) I popped to the corner shop to pick up a few things for Sunday lunch (in the New Car!) and found a sign above the eggs, supplied by a local farmer, declaring that they are all guaranteed double yolkers. "How do you know?" I asked the lady at the counter. "Beats me," she replies, "but he says they've never laid a single yolker yet." So I bought half a dozen and am looking forward to bright yellow scrambled eggs for my tea tomorrow.

9) One of the curses of the death of the dino-puter was that it was the home of my iTunes. I had thought that I would have to admit defeat and reload my music, album by album all over again. But a chance look on line found a fabulous programme designed to transfer music from iPod to computer, and my library is now right here, along with a few new additions. So I drove home from Kent singing, top volume, with my new Glee soundtrack, sometimes singing the lead, and sometimes the harmonies, but always, of course, picturing myself centre back in my own show-choir! When WILL I grow up!

10) So now here I am, in bed, writing a post. I don't know why I've never thought of this before. I thought that sitting in front of Swiss (German) Chick and typing up a lengthy post would be more than a little antisocial, so we chatted for an hour or so and I retired to bed. I'm doing this more often though - propped up in bed, cuppa tea at my side, snuggled under a duvet in my jarmas, this is, surely, the bestest place in the world to correspond! And now ... to sleep. G'night!

100 Things

2010-05-06T16:08:00.005+01:00

Lots of radio silence recently, for which I can only apologise.

My beloved old laptop (the dino-puter) has died a flamboyant death, in a torrent of virus'. 27 in total, the poor dear. So until I can get to John Lewis (other department stores do exist) to get a replacement, I will be limited to clandestine work time and weekend posting ops only.

With this in mind, I give you the following. Do stick with it. There's some corkers in there. My favourites are 37, 41, 78 (what a guy!) and, of course, 100.

1. More than 99

2. Less than 101

3. 10²

4. C, to the Romans

5. 1100100 in binary

6. Boiling point of water

7. Atomic number of fermium

8. Years in a century

9. Number of tiles in a scrabble set

10. Telephone number for the operator

11. Number of yards on an American Football field

12. Top marks!

13. Address of oldest live music club in London

14. Number of years in the Hundred Years War (give or take ...)

15. Centimeters in a meter

16. FTSE

17. Film, staring Mylene Dizon

18. Age of Bob Hope when he died

19. √ 10,000

20. Average IQ

21. Hecto

22. Sum of the first four cube numbers (1+8+27+64)

23. Sum of the first ten odd numbers (1+3+5+7+9+11+13+15+17+19)

24. The year Pliny The Younger came to power

25. Number of Senators in the US Senate

26. Telephone number for the Police in Greece

27. Years of Solitude, by Garcia Marquez

28. ... Years Ago by the Rolling Stones

29. Haircut ...

30. The dollar bill with Jefferson on it

31. The road that goes over Tower Bridge

32. The size of the biggest Bank of England note in circulation (but only in Scotland)

33. The number of runs in a century in cricket

34. The number of jiffies in a second

35. "I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times the conclusions is false. The 100th time I am right." Albert Einstein

36. Number of zeros in a googol

37. Amount, in pounds, paid to Tony Hart for designing the boat design on the Blue Peter badge.

38. Speed that a sneeze travels out of the nose

39. The number of pairs of shoes that I own (roughly)

40. The distance a wolf covers in a day, in miles

41. The number of people who choke on a ball point pen in America every year

42. Ikhulu in Zulu

43. A ton in cockney rhyming slang

44. One less than there are red balloons

45. Dear Jane's debut album

46. The sum of the first nine prime numbers (2+3+5+7+11+13+17+19+23)

47. An octadecagonal number

48. Number of pounds in a hundredweight

49. Pennies in a pound, cents in a dollar, cents in a Euro, etc

50. The number of years from now that the Byrds sang about

51. Miles per hour = speeding ticket

52. Bus route from Elephant and Castle to Shadwell

53. Cheapest beach holiday currently listed on Expedia

54. Distance from my house to Bristol

55. Cost of a Picasso in dollars (and in millions)

56. An area of land big enough to sustain 100 families

57. The number of surnames which 85% of Chinese people have

58. 1/5 the distance that the Proclaimers would walk

59. The number of fingers and toes in my family

60. Sexual acts performed each day worldwide (in millions)

61. Times a human heart beats in a minute and a half

62. Different vocal sounds that a cat can make

63. Take offs and landings at Heathrow in two hours

64. Passengers through Clapham Junction train station every three minutes

65. Years since George V came to the thrown

66. The number of men for every 102 women in Canada

67. Hours spent online to compile this list

68. The sum of two prime numbers (47+53)

69. Men diagnosed with breast cancer each year

70. Home of Winnie the Pooh

71. Very bright light!

72. Blood vessels in the back of your hand

73. The distance (in feet) that a squirrel can fall without hurting itself

74. Breeds of cats

75. Languages spoken in Canada

76. Calories in a teaspoon of peanut butter

77. Number of times lightening strikes the Earth per second

78. The distance Larry Lewis ran in 17.8 seconds in 1969. Aged 101!

79. The distance Usain Bolt ran in 9.69 seconds in 2008. Aged 22!

80. Years that Sleeping Beauty slept for

81. Years that Rip Van Winkle slept for

82. Pounds (in millions) of coffee bought by Starbucks each year

83. Average weight of a hippo (in pounds) at birth

84. Live tarantulas in Raiders of the Lost Ark

85. Length (in feet) of the longest car ever made

86. Bottles of beer on the wall

87. Section in the library containing books on philosophy and psychology

88. Speed that lava flows out of a volcano

89. Years to wait to see a agave plant flower

90. Record for the most number of hoops hula'd in one go

91. Watts of electricity generated by a 2x4ft solar panel

92. Grams of water to dissolve 37g salt

93. Feral cats recently found to be living in Sleeping Beauty's castle in Disneyland

94. 100 birds = good feng shui

95. Years since the death of Mark Twain

96. Number of times I've heard someone say "hung parliament" so far today

97. KISS FM

98. Cost of The Angel Islington in Monopoly

99. The number of facts on this list

100. The number of posts that I've now written

Quiz Night

2010-04-30T01:07:00.002+01:00

All the questions asked, all that remains is for our quiz master, Matt the Hat, to reveal the answers.

"So! According to the Italian government, which European country is the most cultured?"

He looks to his audience to throw in answers.

"Italy!"

"France!"

"Greece!"

"No, no, no," says Matt the Hat. "The answer is ... Britain."

One team is incredulous. "Fuck off!" says their spokesman.

I think, maybe, the Italian government should have carried out a more thorough questionnaire before leaping to any hasty conclusions.

More Tea Vicar?

2010-04-26T20:52:00.004+01:00

We are a fairly diverse office.

Six boys and two girls. Three fathers, and one stepfather. Two husbands, three co-habitees, and three singles. One marathon runner. An ex-military man, an ex-husband, and an ex-sailor. Four homeowners, two renters, and two multiple-home owners. One in his 20's, four in their 30's, two in their 40's, and one about to turn 60.

We are all very different. Different lives, different backgrounds, and different outlooks. But we've discovered a common ground.

We are all obsessed with tea.

Someone will do a tea round about six times a day, and each time, the reaction is as if everyone is on the brink of dying of thirst. Enthusiasm abounds. The steaming mugs are brought back through to us, and each one is grasped and slurped from, and everyone gives a pleasing, "aaaaah". There is nothing like a new cuppa tea.

One of our lads joined the company as a hardened coffee drinker. He would arrive and head straight for the Nespresso machine, with one of the little black capsules, and a small cup, to get a short sharp shock of caffeine, and go back, and back five and six times a day. Then one day he was accidentally given tea instead. And now he's one of us. We converted him. Lured him in and snared him. With tea.

But we're diverse in our tastes. PG Tips, of course, gets the popular vote. But I'm an Early Grey drinker myself, so I took a box of that in on my first day. One of the boys was given a sample of Redbush, and that's become a popular mid-afternoon tipple. And mint tea (or "lesbian tea" as it's oddly known between the boys) of course, for the return to the office from an indulgent lunch.

Then one day there were hangovers, and I introduced them to the wonder that is Twinings Morning Detox. Knocks all hangovers dead. Official. But it convinced us of the medicinal qualities of tea, and now we look to it to fix everything. Stress, hunger, digestion, hayfever. Everything.

This afternoon I discovered that there are no fewer than eleven different sorts of tea in the cupboard. I think that we've become obsessive. We have reached the point where we really only go to work to drink tea. I think that maybe we need to ween ourselves off.

I wonder if there's a tea for that ...?

Here Be Dragons

2010-04-23T21:44:00.007+01:00

Today is St George's Day.

Yes, really!

Every year there is a flap about the fact that no-one ever remembers when it is, and it's not fair that there's no bank holiday, and we aren't patriotic like the Irish or ... well just the Irish really ... and it's a public disgrace, etc etc etc, blah, blah. blah, and EVERY year it sneaks up on us, causing a nation to rise up, as one, and say, "oh, is that today?"

I like a bit of patriotism, me. I like a bit of Rule Britannia. Singing Jerusalem makes me a bit tingly. I bloody love that crazy bunch of Greeks and Germans that are our royal family. And even I forget when it is. We're just not very good at celebrating our Englishness in England.

Don't get me wrong. Come the World Cup, I can guarantee that every second car will have a George Cross clipped to the back window, and you'll not be able to walk into a pub without hearing the tribal cry of, "In-ger-lund, In-ger-lund, In-gur-lund," but I have a sneaking suspicion that this isn't quite the same thing.

During the last World Cup, I heard a lot of references to, "the England football flag," (including one advert in a national tabloid newspaper, which should remain nameless*). Somehow I managed not to beat each person around the head as they said it, and shout, "it's not a football flag! It's your national flag, you great frigging chimp!" But you see why I'm not entirely convinced that this particular brand of flag waving really is patriotism, in the oldest sense of the word, because I don't believe that they know that's what they're doing. Bless them.

Now I'm not saying that I think that St George's Day should be a bank holiday, because, as it happens, I don't. Mainly because we already have a few around now, so it would probably be surplus to requirement. But I do think it would be nice if people knew a smidgen about our patron saint.

He's a fairly well loved dude, is George. He is patron saint to eight countries, two Spanish autonomous communities, twenty cities, boy scouts and skin disease sufferers and syphilitic people. Which is nice.

He was a soldier in the Palestinian army of the time, but one day the man in charge, in a move of questionable sanity, said that everyone in the army who was a Christian would be arrested, and our George didn't much like the sound of that, so he objected, and was arrested, lacerated on a wheel of swords (the new ride at Alton Towers?), then had his head chopped off. What a day!

I'm not sure when he slayed the dragon. That must have been whilst he was in the army I suppose. Palestine was crawling with dragons in those days. Rather amusingly, when I googled images of dragons to insert in the post at this point, the one on the right was one of the top in the search. I'm not sure, but I don't think that's a real dragon.

Anyway, happy St George's Day, one and all. I hope you're all eating boiled beef and carrots, and drinking warm lager, whilst wearing your Morris Dancing uniform, and waving handkerchiefs in the air.

God save the Queen!

* No it shouldn't. It was The Mirror.