Christmas and New Year

The TB has the flu (again!) so it was just the 3 of us for Xmas, and the most christmassy part was drinking bucks' fizz and playing Cludeo by the fire!

I managed to turn out a top hole lunch of beef wellington and lava chocolate puddings with vanilla ice cream (not together, veg with the beef wellington and chocolate pudding after!) but I am rubbish at shopping for the long hall so we now have no eggs, hardly any bread, no butter and no fruit juice until the shops open tomorrow. It has finally stopped raining so I'm off to take the dog for a walk.

But first, a review of the year - hardly any travelling apart from Naples which I didn't like much. But I met JK, saw Patrick Stewart play Prospero Bought new house, got a whole dress size less fat, became self employed and I'm doing OK. I could use more work but the income hasn't dropped so next year is better they tell me - sounds good! I'm well on the way to having the major health issues sorted and that's a good thing, and doing lots of fun regular exercise, mostly down to the flexibilty of freelancing, hurrah. Notably, made some new friends which I'm especially proud of because the general view seems to be that it's impossible once you are over 40!

Things I am going to do in 2008 ( not resolutions because I've already booked some of them!)
- have an appointment with a professional stylist to go through my wardrobe and take me shopping.
- take a motorhome on a drive from San Francisco to LA via Yosemitie National Park
- take the AB riding on Holkham Beach
- and I'd really like to start a supper club, must think of some interesting people to ask........hmmm

Ploughing through snot

I know, I know it's boring, but honestly I have had this cold since the middle of November and it is starting to drive me more than slightly mental! I am responsible for a hefty slice of the profits of both Kleenex and Lemsip and am really starting to wonder what I have to do to shake this thing off.

I'm taking vitamins that are supposed to boost the immune system, echinacea, saunas, baths with tea tree oil and lavender. Lots of hot lemon and honey drinks. And bracing walks wearing a large woolly hat.

I can't sleep it off because of the whole sore back thing - and one is making the other worse I'm certain of it.

So if anyone out there in the blogverse is keeping the magical cure to themselves- do share, please!

Christmas for the Bewildered

Bloody hell, just tried to order meat for Xmas day and the order book is closed!! - eep so got to go to Butchers this afternoon and buy it, he swears that it will still be fine on Xmas day, I hope so! - eep

Amazon has yet to turn up with the presents so we could have old meat and no pressies - disaster! So much for leaving things until the last minute, but frankly Christmas is still a week away so it doesn' t feel all that last minutey!!

Better get round Waitrose for the other stuff tomorrow then and only leave the veg for Xmas eve.

I have given up on Christmas cards completely and everyone is going to get a nice email saying I love them loads but I've spent the card budget on buying books for a slum school in Manila! I Hope they approve.

Beecham's Powders and Bolly don't really mix

It is the season of Christmas parties, so of course I have a cold and a sore back, yes still, I have partaken of every quack cure known to woman (known to this woman) but still I sniff, and the skin on my face is drying and flaking off - I look like the Mummy.

But I am made of sterner stuff, and anyway it's too painful to lie in bed, so I headed off to the West End yesterday for lunch in an awfully nice restaurant called Pattersons. The reason this isn't a restaurant review is that I drank 3 glasses of champagne on an empty stomach and I can't remember what I ate! - but it was very nice.

And , oh joy, I was sitting next to a guy works with the woman who was the class sex pot when I was at Uni, and he said without any prompting "but God, I can't beleive you were in the same class as P you look SO much younger than she does." Call me shallow but I've waited 25 years for that one - hurrah!

Then came the horrible ending to any Xmas lunch the walk east up Oxford St looking for a cab, it is truly a magical time of year as I found one before the Tottenham Court Rd , so home before 10 - and the superior muscle relaxant qualities of Bollinger meant I had my best nights sleep for weeks!

Xmas Pudding Ice Cream

As close as I get so making my own puddings! - S0 enjoy

1 small tub double cream - lightly whipped
250ml tub of best Vanilla Custard - Watirose Vanilla Custard is BRILLIANT for this
100 mg sultanas
100mg mixed peel
Slug of rum
Slug of Port
Juice of an orange
tsp of cinnamon or mixed spice

soak the fruit in the booze and orange juice and add the spice. Mix together the whipped cream and custard and then add the soaked fruit and booze. Freeze. If you can whip it as it's freezing or churn in an ice cream machine that is even better.

Fabulous on warm mince pies!! Or even better mincemeat shortbread -recipe to follow!

Stupid Back

My lower back hurts - really hurts. It hurts worst in bed at night, so bad that it wakes me up, but it's fine when I'm walking around or swimming or sitting or pretty much anything other than lying down.

This means that I am short of sleep and very very grumpy.

I have been to the chiropractor and have to go again on Saturday - there was an almighty click which she "adjusted" my lower spine and to be honest I've felt a bit sick ever since.

Perhaps I should just go out and spend £500 on a new memory foam mattress - the way I feel at the moment I would pay £500 for a good night's sleep!

I thought that I was fairly intelligent and reasonably well informed

I don't know if you watched the Tony Blair documentary last night. One thing still leaves me puzzled. He thought the war in Iraq was , I quote "morally the right thing to do".

I can understand why he thought it made economic sense - oil
I can understand why it might have been politically expedient - you don't argue with the USA
I can understand why he thought it might be in this country's best interests - ditto


But "Morally the right thing to do" - why? On what basis. Because it's not on any basis that has ever been rationally explained to me.

Lovely Weekend

Really nice weekend - although I'm starting to wonder if people come to stay with us for a bit of "regression therapy" , staying at Lippy's is a bit like being at your mum's when you were 10; you get to go swimming, take the dog for a walk, eat home made pizza and watch Robin Hood on Saturday night and get the papers and a roast dinner Sunday lunchtime. Perhaps running a country house hotel is my true calling? Who knows, it's a bit late now anyway!

In other news the parish magazine carries an announcement about the new "dog waste dispenser " on the village green......they actually mean a dispenser for poop scooping plastic bags, at least I think so. Meantime my own personal dog waste dispenser is asleep under the desk.

The inside of bloke's heads

TB "You can still tell that lad was born prematurley"

Lippy "How, he's not small for his age, in fact he's quite tall for a ten year old."


TB " No, not that, he just always looks a bit startled!"

Places I haven't been and would like to go to.

1. Sri Lanka
2. Angkor - Cambodia
3. Hong Kong
4. Palawan
5. Kota Kina Balu
6. Prauge
7. Barcelona
8. Berlin
9. Iceland
10. Big Sur - California
11. Sydney
12. Dubai

I really want a holiday!

How much for a letter?

When a client asks "how much for a letter" and I reply £180 plus VAT it always sounds ludicrous, even to me!

But in truth, it's never just a letter - I need to understand the case, make sure that the person who actually owes the money is the same as the person the client tells me owes the money (you wouldn't beleive how often it's someone else entirley) , remind the client they can charge interest and check out the invoice figure and the figure I'm being told to collect add up.

And that (along with money laundering compliance etc) takes about an hour - my hourly rate is £180 which is how a letter can cost £180 plus VAT

Lippys Occasional Gude to London Restaurants no - I've lost count now!

Anyway Salaam Namaste in Millman St, Bloomsbury (not far from Coram Fields!)

Lovely food, really really lovely - Fish curry with green mango, Duck Breast in a spicy yoghurt sauce that I can't remember the name of ( a couple of pints of Cobra and the senior moments really start to kick in!). The Tarragon Squid starter merits a very special mention - it was gorgeous and I've never seen or tasted it anywhere else.

It's also worth mentioning that they have 20% off between 5.30 and 7.00 so if your hungry and don't mind eating early , go for it! Whole lot including the beer was just over £20 each - bargin!

One odd thing, men and women don't seem to come to this restaurant together! Apart from one table of BIP's (British Indian Princesses) complete with Mulberry handbags and chaperone, the place was full of cricket club types trying to be funny. So you must go because the food deserves much better!

Lovely attentive service so if you do go leave a big tip!

Occupational Hazard

I was arranging to go out to supper with a friend and this happened;

Friend : "Shall we go to this new restaurant, it's got great reviews?"

Lippy : "No, I sued them when they were still at their old place and they might remember!"

Bit of An Animal?

Well, now you're talking!

Sebastian Chabal.................ooh yeah baby!

Headspace

Yesterday 160 people lost their jobs because, at least in part, one of my client's didn't beleive me when I told him what he needed to do.

My lack of persuasive skills means 160 people with no income just before Christmas.

It's not my fault, I gave him the right answer, and sketched out a plan that would have kept everyone happy and kept him trading.

There is something weird going on too - everyone you speak to has run into an ex-lover and is having a hard time rationalising it. Maybe it's a horoscope thing. Me, I still love everyone I've ever loved - it's my strength and my weakness.

It's going to be a long, cold winter, I can feel it setting in .

Slap!

I'm not really a make up girl, I'm more a "cover your face in vaseline and go horse riding in a force 8 gale" type.

However, I am now "on camera talent" to coin the phrase and have my very own "Mac Pro" Card - so I decided to brave the depths of Neal St ( too trendy by half) yesterday afternoon and get shown how to do make up for a shoot.

What a performance - it takes an hour to do make up properly and even then I don't look that fab. But what is startling is how much make up it takes to even show up under lights. What looks and feels like half a ton of slap in real life, is hardly seen on a camera. See Exhibit 1 - 50 tonnes of eyeliner not looking like 50 tonnes of eyeliner. Weird!

Retro Cooking - Chilled Cheesecake

Back at early teenage parties in the 70's , well on my less than trendy housing estate on the outskirts of Stoke anyway, there was a bit of a craze for cheesecake and cider...a more vomit inducing combination is difficult to come up with, but we were aiming for it.

Anyway, in the spirit of all things nostalgic I decided to make a chilled cherry cheesecake yesterday - you know the sort of thing, digestive biscuit and butter base , filling basically a mixture of Philadelphia Cheese, icing sugar and whipped cream, all topped off with cherry conserve. Heart attack on a plate. And you know what, it wasn't half bad. Not something you'd want to eat every week (without throwing up, but stop right there because that's an eating disorder missy!) because you would be the size of a small house, but I won't be waiting another 30 years to make another one....probably because I may well be dead by then.

Fashion

According to December's Vogue, the Jack Russell Terrier is the Fashionista's dog of choice.

Looks like I'm right on trend!

So much for the AB telling me I'm insufficiently stylish!

Home Working

The Times is seriously starting to annoy me on this subject "home working = low productivity" according to it's correspondent this morning.

Dear Times Correspondent Woman,

This morning in your opinion column you concluded that home working is no sort of working life at all. And certainly not any sort of effective working life.

Sorry love but no, I used to bill 5 hours a day when I worked in a law firm and I bill 5 hours a day now. Just because you have the self discipline of a jelly fish doesn't mean everyone else does. I do not eat all the time because the fridge is close, in fact I probably eat a lot less because there isn't a Starbucks around the corner.... in fact if you could install my own private Starbucks barrista in my kitchen (prefereably one who looks like Orlando Bloom) then my life would be absolutley perfect in stead of just pretty much perfect.

I still get up, get dressed , wash, take child to school and keep pretty much normal office hours. What I don't do is spend 2 hours travelling in and out of the city every day wasting my time and the planet's resources.

So sorry you haven't got any self discipline or motivation dear Times correspondent but please don't conclude from the fact that you can't do it, that no other bugger can!

Seethingly yours
Lippy

The Biology of Winter Ailments

Having spent a lot of the last week coughing and sneezing I've become somewhat obsessed with snot.

When you have a cold what factors determine the amount of snot you produce? No really, some people seem to just have a little sniffle, others are practically hoiking up buckets of slime. Is it genetic? Because it's a protein secretion is it diet linked like lactation - do better fed people produce more snot? Is it linked to the nature of the virus infection itself - I know bacterial secondaries make it thicker and more green. And if you cough so hard you burst a blood vessel it's the blood that turns it brown.

But there is a huge variation in texture from foam to practically putty - that must be in some part due to a dilution factor?

There has to be PhD in this for someone. Sponsored by Kleenex perhaps - "The Absorbent Quality of Tissues in relation to the defined Classes of Snot Produced by The Common Cold"

Flow

One of the yogic concepts is flow - the state of being present and focused on the task in hand without being taken forward to consider the outcome. In other words being in the moment or in the zone. Considering that a lot of the time the practice to acheive this longed for state amounts to nothing more than breathing I find it fantastically difficult. I'm too goal driven, too self conscious too tuned in to the constant narration of self-criticism which is going on in my own head.

But spending the weekend on the sofa gave me more than a little time to practice- in between sleeping and drinking cups of hot Ribena. And I think that it might even be working.

At least I thought it was OK until in the middle of my dressage test this morning the examiner bellowed "Horse looks lovely L, but will you please breathe! " - so busy concentrating that breathing went out of the window. Some things should just happen, automatically, all by themselves. But I've always found my bod more than a bit unreliable and apt to go wrong with the slightest excuse. So that's my latest excuse for all the difficulties I have with flow.

Coughing!

Today is going to be spent under a duvet watching DVD's and swilling down echinacea and vitamin C whilst putting due faith in the placebo effect.

One of the many problems with being a grown up is that if I really want chicken soup and brioche toast I am going to have to make them!..boo!

Woman flu

I'm feeling a bit rough to be honest, sore throat bit sweaty, really bad headache, swollen glands and a touch yuk all round.


So of course - went to work on shoot, cooked lunch for the crew and now I'm catching up on some paperwork. I have to go to London at stupid early o'clock in the morning, AND I'm missing out on a free lunch at the Park Lane Hilton, because I'm working on a shoot! - it's divine retribution for my otherwise charmed life.

Can't think of a single interesting thing to write....so no change there then!

Demon Bitch Monster of Death

My other half is a terrbile nag, his idea of assisting is to watch me doing a job, standing with his hands on his hips before sighing heavily and saying "I wouldn't do it like that if I were you."

Sometimes I ignore it, other times as those words "I wouldn't do it like that if I were you " hit the air , the red mist comes down in front of my eyes and everything goes a little hazy.

Luckily, the knife drawer was a little out of my reach, but I understand that the words "so far up yourself you can't see out!" did pass my lips, amongst other rantings, which I can see was perhaps a teeny little bit unreasonable in the circumstances. But then nagging is mitigation for murder so maybe I'm not all that unreasonable after all.

Partay!

Children's parties - enjoyable afternoon or parental competitive event?...discuss

I'm so old that my memory of an ultra sophisticated children's birthday party was being taken to the "Bridge Cafe " at Keele Service Station to eat chips and watch the lights of the cars on the M6 as they passed beneath us...how times have changed!

The AB is now 11 so I'm getting off relativley lightly this year with a get together at the swimming baths followed by chocolate cake and ham rolls. But we have done more in previous years including ; the play barn party, the cowboys and indians disco party, the "it's a girl thing" make up and hairdressing for 9 year olds party, the pyjama party with storyteller, and the try to kill your child's friends at the local ice rink party. All good fun in their way - but you do worry, AB got so many presents when she was 6 that she stuffed a load in her toy cupboard and never opened them!

I don't think there is a good answer - one children's entertainer was so popular round our way that by the end of the "party season" the kids were giving the punch lines of the jokes before he did....at least we never hired him.

Ow!

I did go to the gym and this morning it hurts, especially just between my shoulder blades, (shoulder presses I think they are called) and my calves , running uphill on a treadmill will do that for you.

Have to say the TB looks very sexy getting all sweaty on a rowing machine. And I'd probably do better if I spent less time watching and letching and more time pedalling the stationary bike.

Also the whole process would be much more efficient if we didn't come home and have beer and curry afterwards.

By way of public information announcements did you know that if you pay your credit card late in one month you get charged interest for the next two! - robbing bastards! I never knew about this because I always pay my credit card off in full on time, but honestly of all the scams to stop people getting out of debt. That one seems to be right up there with the ironically named "Bright House" and it's 30% interest rate - never go there, if ever there was a business that deserved to fail horribly that is it.

Beast - chapter and verse.

Today is one of those really shitty days where nothing is going easily or to plan. It's an "Oh shit that was supposed to be with the High Court this morning " kind of a day. Added to which I really hate this case, it's really hard technically AND I have to drag every tiny piece of evidence out of the client AND he is a really slow payer so motivation to do this extra super hard bit of work is , lets be truthful pretty low.

I'm attacking the motivational lacuna with housework - applying the gospel according to Beast.

So frantic typing and rushing to the post office is being broken up with mad hoovering to get out some of the frustration - hoovering the stairs with a Dyson is extra virtuous as it doubles up as in-house weight training.

Also going to the gym tonight - I'll let you know if I've cheered up tomorrow.

Weekending

We had the most beautiful weather this weekend, crisp and clear just designed to make trees with golden leaves look stunning.

Cue family bike ride with my sister and her family. Now we are not repeat not a family of genetically superior athletes, so the 10 mile cycle round the lake is a challenge. And one for which we "carb up" suitably with mini mars bars and chocolate brownies. So really it did serve us right that we were lapped not once but twice by both the local pensioners outing, and a girl in high heels, skinny jeans and designer sunglasses who didn't even turn pink going up the hills let alone sweat!

I've been typing too much lately and the back of my right hand is bruised and a bit swollen - at one point it looked as if alien life in the form of a mammoth tick had taken up residence under the skin!

So I'm reverting to long hand for a bit!

Working!

If I ever complain about not having enough work to do at any future date feel free to super glue my lips together!
Oh my GOD it's ridiculous!

On the other had from a PR point of view it's kind of brilliant, the TB who I think harbours illusions of my sitting in front of the telly with a cup of tea watching Trisha and Diagnosis Murder, has been answering one telphone while I email and answer the other!

In between times he has looked impressed, brought me cups of tea and is now finishing the ironing! Hurrah!

We are going to be nauseating joined at the hip married people this evening - going to the gym together and then out to the pub. I'll just pass you the sick bowl.

A horse a horse my kingdom for .....

"There is nothing better for the inside of a man than the outside of a horse"

Was it Dr Johnson - sorry I can't be bothered to walk over to the bookshelf and pick up the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations to check, the Idler must be working.

Anyway the poor little AB just turned 11, and the door slamming, mother upsetting, monosyllabic ingrate phase has kicked in early. Thank goodness for ponies - there is no better cure for a fit of teenage hormonalness than a muck fork and a wheel barrow, and you get all that nice smelly country air thrown in for free!

It only turns nasty when mother is in the menage doing a spot of horse schooling, it's doubly embarassing because mother is quite good and that's really not allowed! Little does she know that I'd love to be doing the grooming and mucking out too - but I'm holding back because even I wouldn't want to be THAT embarassing!

Bad Meeting

There is a way of handling a meeting where you have prepared and no one else has. The "Office Slaves Guide to Ettiquette" says that you smile, listen, offer constructive comment and basically let everyone else crib your homework without making too much of a fuss.



You do not -repeat not - do what I did on Friday. Which was explain my point with such ill grace that my not so hidden agenda of "listen muppet I went to law school not you and that's before we even start to get into how much cleverer than you I actually am and the bit where I hit you over the head with the copy of the Legal 500 that has my name in it not yours." OH yes that agenda was out there on the table for all to see.



It probably didn't help that I had a hangover, and that everyone else was 15 minutes late for a meeting that I had travelled for an hour and a half to attend.



Any road up - the outcome of the meeting was that they are doing what I told them to.



The downside is that I'm freelance - and they will probably never employ me again as I've so clearly and unequivocably demonstrated that I'm not at all lovely to work with. Ho hum......

The Idler

I really like the Idler - what's a professional slave with a hot sideline in varyingly successful self improvement doing reading a manifesto to idleness ? I hear you ask.

Well - it's very funny. And dispite the wankerish tendencies of some of its regular contributors, yes Keith Allen I do mean you, there is something fantastically worthy about it. It's a Victorian temperance pamphlet for the twenty first century. In a world driven by political spin and the cult of the personality here is a real policy driven political tract. Ableit one with a pair of tits, a cucumber and a huge pot of Vaseline on the front cover.

I am, in my own warped way, attempting to live out it's theory that working for two hours a day is plenty...where I'm going wrong at the moment is spending the other twenty two hours TRYING to work.

I need to get out more loves.

I may never do any work again

http://stephenfry.com/blog/

Moving on...

Well solo work methods have moved on somewhat - rather than playing Radio 4 in the background I've discovered Channel 4 on demand. This means I can down load Studio 60 episodes and play them in a window on the computer and pretend that I am sharing an office with Matthew Perry.

I am deeply deeply offended by the suggestion that those of us who work from home sit around in our pyjamas all day and don't shower; for the record, I'm showered, I'm wearing make up and perfume and although I am wearing jeans they are dark denim and look fine with my grey cashmere sweater...so those of you huddling together in some corporate office seeking comfort from the body warmth, stop feeling superior right now!

The rest of the family are having struggles of their own. For an eleven year old girl not having a best friend is the end of life as it is known, having had brilliant mates last year the AB is not having such a vintage season in her new school. And it's hurting. This morning there were tears and its so tough, what can you say , I tried " you can only be yourself and friends will happen, just not always as quickly as you'd like."

Beta Female

I wear size 14 (UK 14, US 10 - for clarification and additional vanity!) jeans and this, by my own admission makes me a beta female.

There is no getting around it, the law school diploma is no help at all, nor is the current (not too shabby) salary nor the fact that I'm seriously thinking about one of those rather chic new Volvo convertable saloons.

I can ride, shoot, dance, speak two languages with a degeree of fluency and get by tolerably in a third.

But beta, beta all the way and probably a beta minus at that. For this simple reason there are womens clothes shops that I can't go into. Not unless I want a scathing , appraising, up and down look as I walk through the door, and a withering comment of "sorry madame I don't think we have anything that would fit you." And by this one fact, in girl world, I become a second class citizen. Too embarrased to "borrow" clothes off my friends at college because I was certain (wrongly as it turned out) that they would all be a size 10. I also tend to down grade the things I have achieved because I wasn't thin when I did them " That distinction I got would have been so much better if I'd been two dress sizes smaller at the time;" " That time I travelled in the far east, would have been so much more interesting if I had been wearing a smaller bikini."

I'm taking the trouble to write this down so that I can see for myself how much bollocks it truly is. And even now I'm not sure I'm convincing myself. You see this blog would be so much better if only I was writing it wearing size 8 jeans.

It's all my own fault

Why does my brain suddenly decide to work properly at eight thirty on a Sunday night?

I'll tell you why, years of training is why; It started age 7 with the last minute homework dash for my fearsome primary school teacher. Much of my education followed in the same mode and hadn't got any better when, at the end of almost twenty years of full time education we got to the the late late law school seminar preparation stint. And, of course, coming right up to date with the writing of the script/cross-examination questions/summing up just right before I'm going to have to produce them to a tv producer/judge. Forget adrenalin as a motivator, anything less than bowel loosening fear just doesn't seem to cut it with my frontal lobes. I can even spell - get me!

Oh Dear

My blogging alter ego has become a dyslexic bore, who can't write for toffee! Oh dear!
Maybe as the TB kindly told our daughter last night "I'm at that stage in my life" a not all that eupahmistic reference to "that stage where it all goes pear shaped"

Having never been pear shaped - no hips and no arse sadly - I am awaiting the coming metamorphisis. Meantime I shall search for inspiration and try to remember to use the spell checker, when I'm not having a senior moment obviously.

Today I need to finish the month end accounts, do an evidence review and find a law library in Cambridge (this last in an attempt to avoid having to go to London on Tuesday) I'm also going to find chat up the Official Receiver - what a wild and wacky life I do lead!

Why is there a picture of your office on blogger?

Well just thought you might want to see it is all, the computer sits around the corner. And the clock is very large so I don't forget to note down lots of billable hours!

The Whole Point

The Whole point of being self employed is that I get to work fewer hours a day, have a lot more flexibility and still make the same money - or work the same horus in a day and make more money, whichever....either way it's my risk and me who is waiting for the cheques to come in. So far this month, as far as the cheques go...it's been a slow month.

Get your cheque books out client type guys, there is only so much work a lawyer can do without an adequate coffee supply, and the sort of cases you've got we are talking 8-10 cups a day minimum, when the Gold Blend runs out the work stops, OK???

Also being self employed lets me have open bizarre windows open on the computer and listen again to Radio 4 comedy while I work - it's strangely consloing I find!

Italians couldn't organise their way out of paper bag...discuss

Italy looks very pretty as you can see - but "Italian Conference Organisers" those words should not be in the same sentance! I feel bad now that I didn't listen more closely to the Chinese delegate or speak to the Russian or find out what the heck the Frenchman's problem with Ethanol bio-fuels really was. But there was no water in the conference room, only two toilets for 180 people, the translation was dodgy to say the least and my feet were swollen from standing up to eat my meals 4 days running! The higher mind should rise above this...but mine isn't higher!

Telly duddies

I did think that installing 4-on Demand on my work computer might have been the worst thing for my work productivity since, well since the internet frankly. But actually having downloaded a couple of episodes of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip , I'm thinking that it may work in a reverse psychology kind of way to cure my of my Aaron Sorkin reverence once and for all.

Studio 60 contains two of my all time favourite actors and , ( to quote my Australian students from a former life) it still sucks rocks! - nobody in tv can be that pompous surely to god! And anyway it's not modern day tv as no one is making a reality show! - clearly out of date, behind the times and still not funny. There is a school of thought that say Sorkin can't write now he's clean - well he certainly re-worked his Gilbert and Sulivan fasination which seems to suggest that he's short of ideas. Although I fall short of suggesting that he should go back to getting "coked up like Columbia" just to write a good tv show, but if he can't do better than that maybe he should stop....writing tv shows.

Plumbing New Depths

I do love a bit of kitsch, in real life I am a paragon of cream and white minimal good taste. But when it comes to media consumption you can't get much lower brow than me. I like my books to be good but magazines and tv can be as crappy as you like - I love 'em I have no shame! Drawing the line only at Big Brother because it's just so bloody dull.

I was quite fond of Jordan and all her "I am a blow up plastic gangsters mol" glory, and thought OK magazine was harmlessly hilarious - until this week. A front cover of Jordan and Kerry Katona coming on like born again Virgins shrieking "I would never have left my kids alone!" really did make me want to heave! Just who the fuck do they think they are. Cashing in on the tragedy of the McCanns is just despicable......there but by the grace of god go all of us with kids, mine was found wandering the halls of a 5 star hotel in her jammies age 2 because the so called "baby listening service" didn't! So OK your not funny any more , you're just not.

The 45 minute rule

You know the 45 minute rule?
That's the one that says "When you finally get around to doing that huge, horrible bit of work that you have been putting off for weeks it only actually takes you 45 minutes."

I'd like to say that I'm going to disprove the rule today.
But the huge horrible bit of work is so horrible, that I'm going to put it off until tomorrow.

Old Habits

If you are prepared to "work off the consequences" with a few late nighters, self employment has the potential to allow one to take self indulgence to a whole new level!

So with this in mind - rather than working on Monday morning I went horse-riding instead. I used to do it lots, but when AB was tiny she was very allergic to horses and had a couple of nights in hospital on oxygen it was so bad. So I quit. Now she is over it and learning to ride herself there is no reason why I shouldn't. So off to the local stables I went - and had the best time! I can still do everything - instructress very complimentary;
she "Did you ever compete?"
me " er no!"
she "Why not!"

So - my legs are bruised purple my back side is sore and I'm saving up for a horse all over again! Hurrah!

Occasionally Touring Restaurant Guide - The Fish and Chip Shop, Aldeburgh

Best seats in the house - the benches on the sea front at Aldeburgh. It's such a posh sea side place even the sea gulls have good manners and don't try and steal your chips.

Cod, chips and mushy peas for 4. The fish was perfect, beyond perfect - stunning. And the mushy peas lovely, not so mushed that they couldn't remember that they had once been peas. But the chips were disappointing - they were hot enough and had crispy enough outsides but had been fried in some random vegetable fat that just doesn't do the business. It HAS to be beef dripping - maybe you can't get beef dripping anymore due to some obscure food hygiene regulation? I will check. But chips with something missing .....

Lovely day though, the dog discovered the sea side and decided he rather liked it - yay!

It couldn't have happened to a nicer bank!

The government bail out that has been offered to Northern Rock stretches the meaning of ironic to breaking point. Why? You ask.

OK let me explain - in the last three years whenever I have been working with an insolvency practitioner to put together a rescue package for a business in difficulty or an individual debt problem there was one factor that would always blow the deal. You couldn't put forward an IVA or a CVA or any sort of a debt rescue package where Northern Rock was a creditor , they didn't even look at the merits of the deal they just said a blanket NO to everything. And when you asked their lawyer for justification in turning down a rescue package for some good little business they couldn't. At least they sounded embarassed to say "it's just the client's policy".

Not too embarassed to ask for a rescue package when they need one though are they...bastards!

Dirty Smelly and Dangerous!

No it's not me that's dirty smelly and dangerous ...although maybe if you missed out the smelly, anyway I digress....it's not me it's Naples where the law conference is, that I'm going to a week on Tuesday.

Everyone else is flying from Gatwick -no brain here is going from Stanstead because it's closer to home and cheaper,but this means getting from the airport to the hotel all on my Jack, which is why this may have been an extremely stupid idea!

I have mobile phone, and emergency contact numbers - but speak no Italian, no doubt in a crisis I will revert to shouting loudly at people in a mixture of French and Spanish...it's worked for me before !

From this you will gather that the paper is finished and submitted and the flight and hotel, AND conference fee (although I almost forgot that bit) booked and paid for - so I'm good to go!

Lippy's Occasional guide to London Restaurants - The Narrow

The Narrow is Gordon Ramsay's gastro pub at Limehouse, deep in the sterile heart of the docklands but right on the river. It's Gordon and it's docklands and so I would have quite enjoyed really hating it - but honestly, it was lovely. My kind of food - devilled kidney's on toast to start with , which were spicy and perfectly just a tiny little bit pink. Then duck breast with honey roast parsnips, nothing to find fault with there and the green beans to go with were an inspired selection. I really couldn't resist the strawberry trifle for desert and it didn't disappoint, it had that authentic" Aunty's hand slipped when she added the sherry" layer at the bottom of the dish, yum yum.

Add to that some excellent company and the sun sparkling on the Thames , a few passing sailing boats and voila!

Also much entertainment in trying to work out who the other punters actually are and why they aren't working on a Monday afternoon???!!!

Useless

Yes I am being useless, but frankly todays choice of activities is as follows;

Finish paper for conference in Italy which is already 3 months late - this must be done to justify grant money that has already been recieved. However, subject matter is bloody hard.

Finish v tricky skeleton argument for trial in October

And you know what - don't fancy either of those much. So.....in a blatant attempt not to do either I have; taken the dog for a walk, had a long conversation with the gas man, exhausted the possibilites of facebook, looked up where I am going to give the paper on Wikipedia , looked it up everywhere else because Wikipedia says it isn't very interesting - unfortunatley it looks as if the general consensus is that Wikipedia was right.

I should also upload the photos from last weekend's scarecrow festival in the village - which was great fun. We made a flying Harry Potter scarecrow, but were well beaten by the full cast of Narnia ( don't people have anythign else to do???) Ended up with lots of jolly , beer fuelled in our case, Dad dancing on the village green.

WI

I did go to my first ever WI meeting last night. Whether from a desire to make better jam, or a last gasp hope of appearing naked on a calendar remains unclear....but they DO sing Jerusalem!

I was also the youngest by about 20 years so I'm not sure that the nude calendar idea has legs in this particular instance.

If you go down to the woods

I've been feeling very guilty about the lack of dog walking that has gone on recently - it's turning into a weekend pass time which is BAD very very BAD! So today after the school run me and the dog headed out of the village and up into the Elveden Forest - to put it in context that's all of 10 minutes away from my house.

But it's a big wood - and you have to be careful, take a wrong trun and you could slip over the border and find yourself in Norfolk! It's also the place to see the strange anomaly of speed traps and rumble strips on a road in the middle of nowhere - a reminder that it's not just people who get run over, this is the fantastically named "Suffolk Deer Safety Project" and a very good thing it is too. The only squashed deer in sight today was a small mangled muntjac.

Must get on- I am officially being a lazy git and I can't afford to be.

Hill Billies

Part of the point of living in the country - along with having a bigger house for your money and fewer sirens in the middle of the night - is that you get to swan up to town occasionally looking all rosy cheeked and healthy and stand out suitably amongst the sallow skined townies.

Well not lately I haven't - a couple of 8 o'clock in town starts have meant leaving home at 5 in the morning only to arrive with bags under my eyes like cargo trunks and finish up with a whole rash of stress type zits that I should, by rights, have grown out of 30 years ago! Anyway came across some girlies in Selfridges who were doing "threading" they pull out your eyebrow hair with cotton thread that they sort of catch between their teeth and spin - as a result I know have extremely tidy eyebrows ! But I need to go back in 3 weeks for another appointment apparently, oh well, temporary improvement is still improvement...right?

C's first day at new school today - I hope she makes nice friends and her friends have nice mothers as working at home means I am Billy no mates and likely to stay that way. I may have to join the WI!

You are going to think badly of me

I can't believe that I did this.......Someone I don't know well and haven't seen for ages, made a passing comment in conversation, "you've got a couple of kids haven't you" being a lazy git and thinking this thread would go no further I gave a "uh yeah whatever" kind of an answer - and inadvertently committed myself to having two children. Rather than being dropped , the topic continued and I couldn't back track - and ended up inventing a whole second child that I don't actually have! By the end she even had a specific style of school shoes!

So clearly when confronted with the choice between embarassment and compulsive liar, I'll go with compulsive liar every time..........................

Even i'm shocked!

Docklands

I like Docklands it's so not like London, it belongs on a film set or in the far east or on another planet....but I like it.

So I was chuffed to bits that we got to film our boring training video in a penthouse flat in Limehouse Basin on Friday. And it looked just like a penthouse flat should look, enormous quantities of plate glass, leather chairs and a swirly glass coffee table....fabulous!

You know it's really really posh when the nearest boozer is Gordon Ramsay's gastropub.

Current Affairs

Well current affairs as they are known to the habitual "Grazia" reader such as myself - but doesn't Angelina Jolie look rough.. I know, those are words that even I am surprised am passing my virtual lips but OH MY GOD, doesn't she look rough! - how bad can life with Brad Pitt be??? I mean she is giving Amy Winehouse a run for her money in the "I'm far too thin for anything good" stakes.

Ooh and I'm reading a fabulous book "The Janissary Tree" all about a eunuch detective in a 19th century Ottoman Court - you'll love it honestly, people being done to death in the harem and all sorts!

It's Hardly Surprising Really

Genes will out ..my arthritic 75 year old father was groving away to an Amy Winehouse track compeltely in a world of his own, in the middle of Monsoon this afternoon. Well,having spent some of his formative years as a bouncer in a jazz club in Paris; Amy sings his kind of tunes.

Meanwhile in the changing rooms my blonde cute ten year old was foresaking the glamorous, velvet dress, wedding outfit for the multi polka dotted "funky number" , and a feather for her hair - I've given birth to Luna Lovegood.....

Stationary

I have a really really bad stationary habit, maybe I should just set up a stationary supplies shop and try and cure myself by becoming a pusher, or at least get everything at trade. I set out to walk past Staples but then, then....I can't resist the latest pen, a new pad, some funky flourescent post-its.

I am going to have to curb things I think otherwise the accountant is going to start orbiting - £175 a month stationary spend for a little outfit like mine is somewhat on the steep side of steep I think, particularly as I do most of my work on line - which requires no paper and no pens...oops.

Nooooooo!

I know that talking about the weather should be banned - as it is all any one has been talking about for the last three months. But hell fire, I've just made soup for lunch - 22nd of August and flipping soup!

I may yet light the fire, power up a DVD (something stupidly escapist like Serenity or something) and get out my knitting. All the road crash DVD's in our house are mine; Buffy, Angel, Lord of the Rings with all the extras, Box sets of Hustle and Hotel Babylon.

All the classy stuff - Pride and Prejudice, Shakespeare in Love, - belongs to C, who is 10.


Saffy and Edina anyone?

Not Subtle

Did I mention that not only were the Man City team staying in the same hotel as my hen party on Saturday night, one of the footy comentating teams were there too.

So Sunday breakfast who should appear in the restaurant but Jamie Rednapp - who is fantastically dissapointing in the flesh, not as tall as we imagined not as good looking as we imagined and following the celebrity rule of threes probably a bit of a cunt. That discovery might have passed between us girlies with just a nod and a wink, but for K. K is a long time graduate of the "Brain Blessed School of Whispering" - and therefore exclaimed at approximatley 200 decibels just as Jamie R passed our table, "oh God and he's got no arse either!"........................so we made his day then?

"That Bloke Looks LIke a Fat Sean Bean!"

I had the full on Manc experience. I spoke to Sven before the match and wished him good luck -and then they won 1-0, it's spooky the effect I can have on people! Although close to the Man City first team appear to have an average age of 14.

We went to a comedy club and I now have an extensive reportoire of scouse jokes; What do you call a scouser in a white shell suit? ............................................................the bride.

I bought out Kendals, having discovered that the part time tv presenting lets me get MAC at Bobbi Brown at trade price and they are tax deducatable.YES!

Clubbing was interesting - yes, that's the right word, -interesting. Although why some guy decided to try pole dancing with the disabled access handrail will remain a mystery. Some barman inspired the quote that makes the title of this post - but S had lost her glasses at that point and I wasn't really convinced.

The hotel was lovely, and the spa fabulous - I declined the spray tan and the hair extensions and had a facial and a massage instead which was lush.

So relaxed and revived it's an early start to the week!

Something for the weekend?

I'm off to Manchester for a hen weekend on Friday night. This has been the source of much amusement amongst my close relatives viz;

"Hens? - old boilers you mean!"

"Manchester? What happened to Prauge, Barcelona, glamour style? - Oh I forgot you're going."

etc etc etc ....you get the general picture.

Well listen up, it's not for nothing that Manchester is the definitive and original WAG central, even I shall probably come back with hair extensions and a spray tan. We are booked for a SPA PACKAGE at a rather nice central hotel, I shall be generally scrubbed and buffed into submission, get thoroughly pissed and stagger back south on a train on Sunday night - hurrah for not having to get into an office on Monday morning, although, in other breaking news, I've joined the gym across the road. Working at home also just means staggering downstairs and sitting infront of a computer all day, so if I'm not going to end up the size of a small mamoth alternative exercise to the office stairs has to be instigated. And I'm booked in for my assessment and induction for 2 hours from 9am Monday morning...oh well!

I'm not entirley sure if I have "V" envy or not - nobody really really grabs me, and I bet you Amy Winehouse doesn't show up!

Now that's what I call a loud noise!

They say old rockers never die, but God don't you sometimes wish that they would?

Watching the Bryan Ferry sessions on BBC the other night was like watching a car crash. He looks terrible, he's too round for the slim fit suits and his hair is parting company with his scalp at a serious rate of knots. But the worst part was that he can't sing any more...the voice has gone and no amount of pretending it hasn't is going to help. Give it up, go home, grow something in the garden instead. It probably won't help but it will get you off the telly.

He's not alone, they were playing "Rod Stewart sings the American Song Book" in the hairdressers the other day and it was enough to make your ears bleed.

Only the girls can sing when they are over 60 it seems - there is only one word for you Aretha ....Respect!

It can't be Thursday already?

Apparently it is - the trouble with being ill and indisposed is there is a horrible amount of catching up to do afterwards!

Spent Monday walking up and down the river by Battersea Reach with a film crew trying to do sound bites as flights to Heathrow went over every 30 seconds; "No pressure love, you have a quiet window, NOW"...."No sorry, STOP, you've got to be quicker off the mark than that!" ...got it done in the end. Tricia, yes you on day time telly, your sound man is fabulous pay him more money!

In brief - in chronological order

1. Moving days arrived and got stuff packed in van
2. Lawyer friend rang with crisis so went to her office and sorted it out for her
3. Nipped to Dr's to pick up inhalers and made comment about funny sensation in side of chest
4. Got admitted to hospital as medical emergency
5. Husband and van and rest of clothes left for new house 180 miles away
6. Got bed on ward full of blokes next to guy chained to prison warder
7. Got injected with stuff that made bruise in stomach size of stomach
8. Got injected with stuff that made me radioactive
9. Got told that highly unlikely anything wrong
10. Got kept in - injected with more bruise stuff that made me feel horrible, fed nasty food and spent time consoling nice ladies who were having their breasts removed
11. Got kept in - as above
12 Got kept in as above
13 Day 4 still no test results
14 Discharged self and drove to Suffolk - not dead will go see GP on Monday

Moving On

Tomorrow morning a couple of removal vans will arrive, pack up all our stuff and move us across the country. For some odd reason it feels as if it isn't really happening, as if I'm making it up and nothing will change. It'll seem real by Thursday that's for sure.

By this time next week there will be no hills on the horizon - literally not figurativley! - I wonder if I will be able to get used to those big skies with out the feeling that I have now that I'm falling off the edge of the world!

Won't have reliable internet until next Friday so see you then!

Thick and Thin

Well if ever a reason was needed NOT to be Victoria Beckham then today's papers have it.

As VB on the plus side you'd have shit load of money and regular sex with golden balls.

On the debit though - No FOOD! (eep , if you've seen me I'm a girl who likes her food - the dieting traumas of this blog bears witness to that!) and dear God her thighs! - it looks like a shark has taken a large bit out of one of them. I'd rather have my slightly chunky with a bit of cellulite on the side ones than that! Nothing she wears could ever make her look intelligent now everyone knows she did that to herself! (it's lipo gone wrong apparently! - like she ever needed lipo where is the adipose tissue to suck for heaven's sake! And not having enough of the right nutrients in her diet to maintain her skin tone - yuk!)

Me and JK Rowling

On Friday I had serious doubts as to whether I was going to be able to transport 2 children and 1 husband to Lonodn in safety..all morning people had been ringing me with flooding horror stories, Liverpool St Station under 2 inches of water, phones not working due to flooding etc.

But we had to go - driving down the M6 was seriously wet and a bit scary, why do people drive that fast when they can't see past the end of the car? We got to Rugby and collected the nephew and then changed to the train. All the station announcements were telling people "please do not travel today there is serious distruption throughout the rail network" - but magically (?) our train was running and was on time.

I had booked taxi's in advance ( fantastically expensive but worth it!) so after the children had a nap, we left for the Natural History Museum at midnight, our tickets were timed for 1am. The museum looks gorgeous flood lit, very Hogwarts in a paler more glamorous outfit really. The queue was very jolly! We were let into the museum on the dot of 1am, but then hit a hitch, JK was well behind schedule. So we took our goodie bags (including the free book) and headed for the cafe. All plans to NEVER read the signed copy went out of the window as we had a two hour wait!! So we read, ate crisps and chocolate brownies and read!

JK was lovely, very very pretty with great taste in shoes, really nice to the kids and not looking even slightly tired.

The TB is swanking as he says she signed his copy with a kiss - it's a squiggle man are you blind?

And there was something fab about coming home on the train with everyone reading the same book!

Tired

So F*****g tired in fact that writing this may be a very bad plan.

Too much work and too much going on , in summary! - had two days in London again this week, with one hour meetings that turned into 3 hours meetings , which is great for the fees and terrible for the schedule.

Never mind - do some bills and cheer up!

Back to London tomorrow to meet JK - so excited! - and the Natural History Museum at midnight has got to be a cracker in itself. And in better news a ticket turned up for the Toy Boy too - so I'm no longer the lone adult (well ish) on the trip!

I have a bad head! ( and I deserve it)

Sorry for absence - been busy, work is arriving and I don't seem to be doing it fast enough. My mind is strangley unfocused and my work days have a worrying absence of "flow"

So today's projects are being undertaken with a searing hangover to see if that helps at all - purely in the interests of research you understand....In a begnin twist of fate, we had the only dry evening for months for our leaving party last night . I have to say in the interests of country kitsch that the back garden bore more than a passing resemblence to a village fete last night, we had a marquee, we had bunting and we had a bouncy castle. Luckily given the proximity of drunks to said bouncy castle there were no broken bones. The AB had the once in a lifetime experience of being on a bouncy castle with her mother, grandmother and aunt! - way cool!

Now it's raining again......

The Sabbath Walks

By 1785 Ironbridge was the firebreathing epicentre of the industrial revolution - Dante's inner circles of hell made manifest some said, coal mines, iron foundries, the Bedlam Furnaces all belching out smoke and worse.



The Ironmasters were generally Quakers - barred from the great universities and the professions because of their religion they seem to have taken to commerce like ducks to water. Kays (shoes), Clarkes (also shoes) Cadbury (chocolate) Abraham Darby (the first iron bridge!) all Quakers.



So down in the gorge the iron masters took a paternal view of their workers, providing decent housing on the whole and to try to slow the death rate and keep drinking gambling and whoring in check one of them set out and made public the Sabbath Walks - paths through the surrounding woodland and countryside that would keep you fit and out of temptation if you walked them on a Sunday.



Yesterday was Sunday - so we walked through Jackfield and Coalport along some of the Sabbath paths and the old railway - and the gorge is so beautiful now, probably at it's most beautiful as none of the trees are so very old. We ended up walking 7 miles rather than 5 because we missed Jackfield Bridge - how can anyone miss Jackfield Bridge it's huge!

"The Proper Care and Feeding of Middle Aged Women!"

I'm going to moan again so look away now !

When you are 45 like me your physical "bounce back" ability and your "zone of eating shit and looking OK" both decrease very markedly year by year. I have comfort eaten for two weeks and so I have put on 5lbs and look like pooh! - I have exercised don't get me wrong, just haven't exercised enough. I also have zits and bags under my eyes like cargo trunks - SO this week, no drinking, no eating shit, going to bed at 10pm and at least two lots of 30 mins exercise a day! You heard it here first - and to start off on the right foot I'm drinking water in the office at 7 on a Sunday morning while I finish working on this evidence and then I'm going for a walk up a hill!

Out of the Comfort Zone!

I surely am out of the comfort zone, a way out on a limb somewhere and swaying about in the wind. While I am waiting for some other people to do stuff I have the opportunity to "review" the way I work and so I am.

In particular trying to make an initial research paper more comprehensive and user friendly so that it's content can be moved across into other documents later to save drafting them from scratch..

But reviewing takes time and is of itself a procedure that creates uncertainty- will this method turn out to be better or worse? Am I being sensible in trying to plan more or just pithering about and wasting time?

New life???

I have been self employed for two and a half days and I am fast becoming nocturnal! Daylight hours are insuficient for the amount of stuff that needs doing between the house, the child and the job.

It would be vile if I wasn't enjoying myself but - panic stricken hysteria apart - this is great fun. It's my schedule, my pace, the jobs I want to do.............

I like it!

Does this mean we have to stay sober?

It did occur to me on Friday night as I walked down Chancery Lane only to be turned back by a police man, that the time you are most likely to run into a terrorist attack is when you have had a drink, or two or three.

Friday my mate H had FINALLY passed the insolvency exam. The important point being that we had spent the better part of the afternoon in a marquee in Gray's Inn drinking industrial quantities of Pimms'. So we set off in search of supper, not too much the worse for wear but a bit only to be sent on a detour around Linclon's Inn Fields and the Aldwych. Not too much of a problem, having had that much of a stroll we carried on to the Eye. Now the Eye was surprisingly quiet, maybe due to hightened level of terror alert? So we decided to go for a sundown flight, which was stunning and I do reccomend it.

Some poor sap in the next capsule was doing the whole, get engaged on a champagne flight thing! Don't do it unless you want the rest of the population clapping and taking photos! - not subtle and what if she had said no? - I digress.

Back to Joe Allen's for supper then walked back to the Bonnington - didn't encounter any more bombs or anything looking like a bomb on the way but that was more good luck than good judgement...still can't let a terror threat ruin your evening can you?

Random Fact Generator

1. Each player must post these rules first.2. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.5. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

8 Random Facts About me;

1. I wasn't always a lawyer - my first job after leaving college was teaching agriculture in a boys boarding school in Western Australia. I've also milked cows for a living, been a shepherd, cleaned toilets in a psychiatric hospital and been a maths tutor.

2. I can touch type at 36 wpm

3. I have a thing about food being better home cooked and home grown. When first married and in the first flush of domestic bliss I even made home made faggots - this involved mincing up sheeps lungs and has never been repeated even though they did taste good.

4. I have my best friend's parents ashes in my office - waiting for her to come back from Melbourne to scatter them.

5. I am the only female member of my family who isn't blonde - this has left deep mental scarring!

6. I once repossessed a jumbo jet at Manchester Airport - this was quite exciting and involved driving down a runway in one of those cars with the light on top. Then we stuck writs all over the cockpit of the plane and took the battery out of the engine!

7. I am lousy at sport - I'd love to be good at it, but I am undeniably rubbish. Hence forced into tap dancing and yoga as the only keep fit options for which I have any vauge aptitude.

8. It really annoys me that my husband is a brillant horseman and can't be bothered to keep and ride a horse....he's way better than me with out trying even slightly.

I tag....Frobisher, Pink Drama, Beast, Hey Lady,Tickers, Alice, (I don't know 8 Peopel will 6 do???)
.

Stuff to do

My bargin, second hand laser printer won't work - tried downloading the installation softwear, tried getting a mate to forward me installation softwear but apparently said softwear has no "signature" and so windows doesn't like it....arggh. I have stuff to do which requires to be printed out, if all else fails I am going to give my friend my headed notepaper and email my letters to her office! Heath Robinson cry your eyes out!

In other news tis my leaving lunch today - at the all you can eat Chinese Buffet, the very height of sophistication! I am hoping for pressies and not for speeches. I declined requests from my male colleagues to reprise my "scary spice" get up , as seen on Red Nose Day...they will just have to live on their memories!

All work and no play!

Oh Lord - the perils of freelancing!

All work and no play is about to make Lippy a very dull girl. I can't go to my very good mate's hen weekend because of work - and it's Barca! NOOOOOOO. Even more annoying the weeks' either side of the dates they have arranged for the hen I have no work booked at the moment.

If anyone else says, "Barcelona's not that great really," I will kill them.

It's also going to feel like I'm working for nothing at least until Christmas because I need to pay back both the freelance business set up costs and school fees..............On the bright side, no office politics, no one else's livelihood to worry about all that good freelance stuff.

Submerged

It's going to rain again in a minute and actually that's quite a scary thought.

There was a tornado here yesterday- it's on the front page of today's Times if you don't beleive me and driving home through the village last night was like driving along the bed of river. The water was up to the top of the car wheels and moving really fast, there were rocks being swept along with it and I really thought that the water might actually pick the car up....horrid!

So working last 3 days of my notice -it's odd really, have lots to do and therefore should get on and do it but motivation is at an absolute all time low! I daren't touch any of my new work as I'm not insured as yet - eep!

Coolest Mum Ever

That's me - we have tickets for JK Rowlings midnight signing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at the Natural History Museum! - hurrah!



I'm a pretty good Aunty to as I remembered to get the nephew a ticket as well!

Coolest Mum Ever

That's me - we have tickets for JK Rowlings midnight signing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at the Natural History Museum! - hurrah!

I'm a pretty good Aunty to as I remembered to get the nephew a ticket as well!

OMG!

On Graham Norton's show last night there was a whole thing about "sploshing" - people covering each other in food for sexual gratification. Some poor sap from the audience got covered in cold baked beans by girls in bikinis.



Most shockingly I'm certain that the lady in the PVC catsuit who was explaining "cake sitting" to a bemused nation used to be my yoga teacher.................?????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Smile for the Camera!

It's a shoot day today, and as I've been up working on an evidence submission since quarter to five this morning, I'm sure that the black circles under my eyes are going to look just fabulous!

Tonight I'm going to get back to the hotel early,have a swim and a sauna, order a room service hamburger and eat it in bed - so there!

Lippy's Random Guide to London Restaurants -yet again

The Great Eastern Dining Room, Great Eastern St, Shoreditch

OK lets be honest here it's not cheap ; but the food is amazing, completely different from anything anywhere else. Who knew that a "son in law egg" is soft boiled and then deep fried ? well I know now, still don't quite understand why it came with bbq pork but there it is.

The service was charming and strangley East European - never had a Polish lady serving me dim sum before but all part of life's rich pattern.

The company was great, I didn't get run over on Gt Eastern st despite trying very hard to - thank you for the great swerve man in BMW and I have a very sore head this morning (I'm old and lightweight!)

MUSIC!

I'm resigning myself to a gig less summer due to lack of time and funds..(has hissy fit and stamps feet). I would KILL (so don't tempt me) to go to the Scissor Scisters gig at the O2 in July, and the thought of heading down there in a Thames Clipper is just so cool. Other gig desires relate to Gogol Bordello, the Stones (although feeling a bit bin there done that got the t-shirt about that one) and Mika. I'd quite like to see Lily Allen after her short set at V last year but I'm not sure how she'd go on with an hour to fill, I think she probably wouldn't in which case I'll keep my ticket money in my purse thanks.

I am sorely tempted to spend money I don't have on downloading the new Fountains of Wayne album - their old songs still remind me so clearly of a mad weekend break in New York about 6 years ago. Perhaps Paul McCartney's new effort as well which everyone seems to be raving about.

In the meantime I have a bit pile of Waterboys CD's to load on here and give back to my sister.

Family!

In a rather disturbing development my daughter's preferred method of communicating with me has become the "post it note".

She left one of the little yellow horrors attached to my desk this morning along with a ASA Water Skills 4 badge. The note read as follows; "Please sew on to pooh bear towel, thank you C."

Pooh bear towel it is then!

Today

After three days back in the office I've had enough and decided to take up skiving again...ok not quite, I have a doctors appointment for something nasty and a script to write and so I'm at home, watching the rain, for a couple of days.

Producing an edit script from interview transcripts is a strange sort of a process. The idea is to make the talking heads look as good as possible on screen while making sure that all the points that you wanted covered are. The good thing about scripted interviews is that it makes the interview process really easy, everyone knows the questions in advance and if the interviewee loses it you just go again with the question.

As I work for a budget production we only have one camera and the worst part of the whole process is nodding inanely at it after the interviewee has gone home, while some tech assistant pulls faces at you (he's sitting in to keep the eyeline with the camera right)...but I do hate noddies, I think everyone hates noddies.

This Month's Magazines

It's not often that an old case makes the press- ok for not often read NEVER - until this month. When an old case in which I acted for the landlord gets a whole feature spread in one of the glossies.

It's old but nevertheless true that when something you know well is covered by the press the inaccuracy of the coverage is truly startling! But if you do read this remember that it is impossible to evict a farm tenant unless he utterly lets the farm go to rack and ruin or doesn't pay his rent or preferably both.

Conscience

Well I have a conscience after all, after my review with the consultant yesterday I am not too bad, so rather than get signed off sick for another 3 weeks I've come into the office to help out.

And to make sure that my brain works and I can remember how to do this before I go self employed ...eep!

Help out of course cuts both ways, it means I get all the shitty jobs but also take long lunches and go home early. This is a good thing. It's quite bad for my bank balance as I'm also taking the opportunity to go shoe shopping and meet friends for coffee. Can I just say now that I love Cafe Nero reward cards, they are the DB. And I don't have the biggest most complex coffee I could order just because it's the free one honest!

Par-tay!

The problem with being an undercover country bumpkin is that it takes very little to make one revert to type;

a keg of cider, a hog roast, a band with a caller and of course I know how to strip the willow and do the virginia reel.........especially in a cow shed that's been dickied up for the occasion complete with chandelier and twinkling stars.

What an excellent night!

My old man's a grifter!

Honestly I was just conned by my own father - remember the £50 bet on the Derby? He got £25 towards it from my sister and £25 from me!!

I fell for the old "just give me a cheque for everything you owe me, £75 ought to cover it," line, didn't check til later that the stuff he'd got me from Tescos only came to £50!!

Feast or Famine

Current state of health and uncertainties about the house move have put paid to a lot of plans for the summer...yes I've just sold my tickets for Denmark to some other lucky bastard, bollocks,bollocks, bollocks, life is so unfair!

Don't know when we are moving so can't book a holiday; don't know which trials are definatley transfering or when we are listied so can't book a holiday.

Only thing we know for sure is we HAVE to be in Suffolk by first week of Sept which means that in September I can do stuff! I'm giving a paper in Naples which means someone else is picking up the tab on 26 Sept and was hoping to stay over the weekend of 29 and get a little serious Italian shopping done. Now one of my best friends is getting married on 29 Sept so will have to get an early flight home on 28..why is that always the way. It's like the rule of parties, nothing for months and then three on the same night!

Oh for heaven's sake!

I have just turned up for an appointment an hour late and a day early! - thank god it was only for a facial!

I swear I am so bad at doing nothing that I am completely losing it - OK I've got the AB to school, fed and in clean clothes and the house is tidy but really that's the limit of it.

I'm not sure if it is just anaesthetic hangover (still ? 3 weeks later? surely not!) or early onset Alzheimers! But this has to stop!

I am awarding myself an afternoon in the garden with a book and a bit of light dog walking..if I try anything more taxing disaster is clearly on the cards.

I hate printers!

Why is it that computer printers invariably die when you need them the most! - printers and photocopiers THE most annoying and indispensible bits of kit on the planet..have just contrived to ruin my whole day !

Arggghh!

Ever so slightly fried!

So learning from last weekend's mistakes, this weekend I just sat in my garden in the sunshine while my friends and family came to visit me...not only did they visit they brought food and DVD's to watch and all manner of good stuff.

It was somewhat sunnier than anticipated and therefore I am somewhat sunburnt to say the least! - but the aloe vera is doing it's thing so it's all good.

We decided in a blur of white wine to back a 25-1 outsider in the Derby , and were strangley happy to watch our money go down the tubes just so Frankie could win it at last, loved the fact that the tv coverage couldn't be fast enough to edit out "whose opening the fucking bubbly then?"..you deserve it Frankie mate, well done!

Jockey's are a strange breed of agressive little fuckers on the whole, if you don't beleive it just go down Newmarket High St on a Saturday night and count the fights!

There's a greatness in my lateness!

I've been a bit backward about a lot of things in life ; didn't get married until I was 30, have a baby until I was 34 or even qualify as a lawyer until I was 32. What was I doing before that? Dossing about on farms and doing a bit of travelling I suppose....spent a lot of my 20's feeling pretty "stuck" and learning to shear sheep !.

Anyway - in my grand tradition of all things slightly retarded, I'm starting my own business for the first time now! And today requires my first big comitment I'm going to buy the books. Even for me a three thousand pound (yes you read that right £3000) spend on books is a bit alarming - but if I'm going to have even a hope for producing the right court forms in July it's got to be done - eep! Also going to print off the business manual and have a look at business telephone and internet packages - pretty sure what I'm going to do , just need to make certain and do the ordering! Please let me get some work after all of this!

Domestic Godess

Well after Pink Drama's slanderous comments about my baking skills I'd better set the record straight - I bake! I'm the sort of saddo who takes home made brownies to work and gets asked for the recipie! At the moment (which is part of the I'm a lardy size 14 problem (that's 10 US I think??) ) the cake tin contains both a nice lemon drizzle cake and some little raspberry/coconut numbers. I bake my own bread too...

Tonight my mate S is around for a girlie night in so I thought - pork stroganoff, with some nice new potatoes out of the garden and some green beans . Nice Pinot Grigio to go with perhaps? What do you think??

'Tis the season

It's summer (almost) so that means village fetes and agricultural shows and all that sort of bollocks!

And as it happens today the TB is off to Ipswich to the Suffolk show, so wave if you see him, and me and the AB are off to a church fete. This means that in a minute I need to go and make a cake! It also means that torrential rain is pretty much a certainty so we will take wellies and an inflatable boat.

Lovely lovely massage yesterday - an hour of being rubbed firmly with bergamot and eucalyptus oils, divine. The perfect bloke would be a six foot four brickie, who was also a trained masseur and yoga teacher - don't you think?

No obvious getting rid of anaesthetic after though - head down the U-bend or not.

Beauty Parlour Therapy

Apparently if you have a massage within a month of a general anaesthetic , then after the massage you can smell the anaesthetic when you pee! - well after this afternoon I shall be able to tell you if this is true or not, as I have booked myself into the beauty salon for a bit of a "de coke and pull through" - or massage and hair cut to give the more accurate, polite version.

And in a further development will attempt to walk the dog around the allotments without him being swept away by a tidal wave!

You can see from the picture of the dog the serious nature of the "short leg issue" so I'll let you know how we get on.

I'm also madly jealous of Pink Drama's pig - I've owned sheep and chickens in the past but never a pig. A pig would be excellent!

Chavtastic!

In a restrained moment - 37" telly - the Curry's bankholiday weekend deal as seen on the telly!

And to be fair it does look very nice. So that's that then.

In more advice to the post-operative, don't go to your friends birthday dinner "Just for a couple of hours!" because even if you are home well before eleven o'clock you will still feel like shit on a plate for the next two days.

It has rained so much in the last two days that even the dog doesn't want to take the dog for a walk. He has very short legs and given the extent of the rain it would be more like a swim than a walk , but all the same, a rare day indeed!

TB has to go back to work away again tomorrow and honestly - just want to cry. Not sure what happened to the old stiff upper lip - just overtired and emotional maybe!

What's Happening?

Well not much really that's the trouble with convalesence it's a bit bloody dull!

Also not a linear curve - so having attained the dizzy heights of "walking the dog round the allotments!" on Tuesday, I did it again on Wednesday, not knocked over by searing pains and faintness and had to go back to bed!

The magic 5lbs hospital loss is sneaking back on - mostly because I've been eating bread...I know really stupid but I was hungry. So bloggers you are my witnesses - no bread for a week and see what happens OK?

In other news - off to buy a new telly! The current one was a wedding present in 1992. The estate agent reckons that our poxy telly is putting people off the house because you can't see the screen from the far end of the sitting room. But is a 40" LCD telly unspeakably chav? ( or Charv as I'm told it's correctly pronounced!)

Breakfast!

It is the most comforting breakfast in the world;
a thick slice of white toast, buttered and spread with Frank Coopers Oxford Marmalade. Coffee made with hot milk and one spoonful of sugar, a glass of smoothie for the health nazi inside all of us.

This morning I indulged, I ate it slowly, relished it and now have fond memories of it.

And at 522 calories for a small plate I know why I don't have it all that often!

Today

My entire life is not being squandered to shit television I promise - although today I discovered "Breaking up with Shannon" in which Shannon Docherty - you know the bitch monster of death from Charmed and Beverley Hills 90210 - tells people their other half wants to split with them because they are too gutless to do it themselves. It's like watching a school disco circa age 14 - classic stuff.

Because I've been arguing with the TB (the usual I'm reckless/he's boring tussel) "Katie and Peter the Next Chapter" got vetoed - Jordan's his type of girl I would have thought, less on the basis of the tits and more on the £43 million...

Anyway in other news - people keep calling round for morning coffee...who knew people actually had time to do that? Why aren't they at work - seems a bit rude to ask really.

Did try to do some work - possibly swayed by the fact that client is incredibly attractive German tv director - who I'd like to carry on working for when I'm self employed...nothing like the odd missive from the sick bed on some vital but esoteric point to keep them keen I always find.

I'm in the mood to say "toodles " at this point - but this is all getting a bit too arch isn't it?

L x

Reality....

"'Reality,' sa molesworth 2, 'is so unspeakably sordid it make me shudder.' "



And never was a truer word spoken by such a tiny child. I have become addicted to all things "Reality" I am the poster child for the Living TV viewer - this is awful, as of tomorrow I'm readin books.


http://www.stcustards.free-online.co.uk/prospekt/prospekt.htm

Mentoring!!

Well I've been watching Beauty and the Best avidly, and in the spirit of the divine Janice D I feel it's time that I passed on some of the knowledge wot I have gained in my life to you lot wot are clearly in need of my wisdom. So here we go with;

"Lippy's Top Ten Tips For Life."

1. Buy your cashmere from Tesco's - this so that when your husband or cleaner inevitably puts your favourite sweater through a boil wash it won't be necessary for you to kill them.

2. Keep your tounge in your cheek at all times - not only does this preserve a healthy outlook on life but it stops you shoving your tounge down the throats of unsuitable people.

3. Earn your own money - more misery is caused by people who won't or can't or are waiting in the hope of someone else's money than almost anything else. And if you have 3 months salary in a high interest account you can tell the boss to "Fuck Off" whenever you like, which is marvelous!

4. Treat Honesty with the Respect it Deserves - keep it for court rooms, most other times it's not strictly necessary. A bit of tact and kindness may be less holy but it makes the world spin on it's axis a lot smoother.

5. Only have friends that you really like - you can't hide this trait and it may make for you missing a few social climbing parties but it has two huge advantages, (1) you never have to spend an evening with people that you don't like unless you are getting paid for it and (2) your friends who you really like are truly flattered by this and keep you close and pampered.


6. Know how to Look After Yourself - If you can look after yourself other people look after you better than they otherwise would. If you are cooking for a good cook you make them your best meal don't you?

7. Try All the New Stuff ! - OK not stuff but experiences, travel, jobs, careers - keep moving then they may not catch up with you!

8. Small Cheap Cars = not crying when a pissed off opponent keys it in the court car park. ( a really good mate of mine drives a Ferarri, the security system that the insurance company insisted on for his garage cost more than the car)

9.Everyone knows something useful - although you may spend a long time wondering what it is.

10. The only thing that actually works for split cuticles is cracked heel balm.


I never said it was wise or useful, but there it is!

L xxxxx

In the Spirit of Compromise

Healthy fun eating??? - ok I spent the morning dipping strawberries in melted Lindt chocolate but do you blame me?

Grilled goats cheese salad for lunch was pretty yummy.

I've got to the point with the "sort out the computer" campaign where I've emailed the office IT totty and asked him to come around and help......well you know, old biddy in distress, might even work???

I walked the dog round the block this morning - but then felt knackered and had to sit down. I've knitted half a cardigan which just proves I'm obsessive and ordered some gay fiction from amazon - well it said "The British Maupin" and if that's not the same thing as "the holy grail put your credit card number in here!" I don't know what is?

OMG - Role Model!

OK, I have some stuff to face up to and plenty to do to keep us out of the poor house but girls I think I've just found me a role model...I know it's a symptom of too much day time tv (and that is so not a good look), but it has to be JANICE DICKINSON!

I know, I know , I can hear you saying it; "you are five foot five and a size 14 ( on a good day) or 16 on a bad one , you have serious motherly tendencies and curly hair. Janice? You're delusional love!"

Janice is a tough bitch, she never turns out looking what she feels is less than her best and she has more guts than anyone ought too.

Like I said, I know, but I have to get seriously fit and get serious about it to get through this. No more comfort eating chocolate and feeling bloody sorry for myself. The fitter I am the less shitty this will be - so good food, rest, sensible exercise for now - then really fucking exercise exercise later. I am chanelling the confidence that the business will go like a rocket and the work ethic (which I already have) to make bloody sure it does. And I can derive some twisted pleasure from watching Abby Clancy suffer at the hands of my heroine in the mean time.

Today's dilemma

Painkillers stop the pain - this is a good thing.
Painkillers also give you shit like rocks - this is a bad thing.
Constipation makes the pain worse so more pain killers are needed.


.....off to eat raisins and bran...................

Stuff to do...

I won't pretend , it's not nice knowing there is more surgery down the line.

But, there is a load of things to do between now and then, I have a house move to organise, a new business to get going, and I have to recover properly from this lot and get fit before the next round.

I do realise that the first step in all of that is to relax and chill out a bit - at the moment, I'm not sure if it's all the drugs, I'm more than a little buzzed, it feels not dissimilar to having just got back from a long haul flight. Post-operative jet lag?

My aim this week is to sort out the drives on my computer and get everything tidy and saved onto external drives - so all the contacts are in one place, not split between the comptuer and the rollodex, and everything on the PC is also on the lap top and backed onto an external drive. So a tidy start for the new office!

I also have to work up to two ten minute walks a day- up to two twenty minute walks a day by end of week three.

Anything you're not clear on I'll be taking questions later!

Honeys I'm Home!

Well back in the land of the living and there is good news and bad news:

Good news; the cyst is gone and I only had laproscopic surgery so no big cut.

Bad news ; the lining of my uterus has gone walkabout around my pelvis and I have endometriosis everywhere, to quote my surgeon "plastered with it" - this will randomly bleed into my abdomen until we do something about it. So I get hormone injections from monday - two lots, one lot to induce the menopause and the second lot to deal with the symptoms. This should shrink my ovaries and uterus and stop the endometrium bleeding. It also lets the doctors check whether the endometriosis has already caused damage to my kindeys or bowel (how lovely) - then in 8 to 10 months time I have to go back in for full hysterectomy.

Blimey if I've been this much of a drama queen so far how bad will I get now!

Slept v badly last night - woke at 3 am and couldn't get back to sleep - so off to spend the afternoon watching back to back episodes of Hotel Babylon.

The injection thing means I still have to take my full convalesence this time so they can see how everything settles down.

And you were hoping to hear from me before you read this - but now it's made you feel a bit ill!

It's tomorrow

It's very hard to post at the moment because there is nothing especially interesting or illuminating about being scared shitless.

And when I break it up it's more than one fear it includes;

1. Being scared of the actual procedure itself - the idea of someone rearranging my innards and being put under anaesthetic, I really don't take well to loss of control.

2. Fear of the pain afterwards..definatley bigger than 1.

3. Fear that I will cock up badly on one of my files today and that work will have a marvelous time bitching about me for cocking up after I've gone...the only good thing being that as my sick note is for six weeks it coincides with the rest of my notice so I won't be back. That is my only consoling thought, being paid £960 for the next six weeks for sitting on my arse.

4. Fear of the frustration that is going to inevitably follow being able to do bugger all for six weeks, can't swim, can't have sex, can go for walks ...you know the sad getting better progressivley longer walks. The walks will be OK, apart from week one when getting to the end of our drive is going to be a challenge they tell me - super!

Chillin'

I spent this weekend at a yoga retreat, getting my head together ! It was very cool, communal catering of the "bring a dish" variety is always generous and fantastic quality - lovely salads and dahls, and our one and only boy (why don't boys do yoga?) had made tikka wraps for everyone , declisious !

The whole age range was there from teenagers to grandmothers. The grandmothers being far more bendy than the teenagers on the whole. So I spent part of Sunday morning walking backwards with my eyes closed in a room full of strangers..proving that when you do that you bump into fewer people than going forward with your eyes open but looking at the ground.

Now - my knees hurt from lots of warrior flow, and I'm a bit sad thinking it will be a while before I can do a lot of that stuff again. But determined that I will do it again.

Discretion forbids

and professional ethics prevent me from telling you what a complete, utter selfish bitch a certain member of the aristocracy was today - and I suffered from the full effect. So I will say only one thing "Lady my fucking arse!"

Nana (2)

My Nana's other famous line was "Never let it be said your mother reared a jibber!"

Which was applied variously to mean :
Don't be such a wimp
Don't be such a lazy git
Don't be such a wimpish lazy git
Don't let anyone find out that you are a wimpish lazy git

Things my grandmother used to say..

I'm originally from Stoke, as I think we have established, where not only do we have a strange accent (cue Robbie Williams and Garth Crooks ( or Crewkes in local parlance) but also a strange turn of phrase.

For example on seeing one of her grandchildren reaching for a third cream cake my Nana ( I had a Nana) would say "You eat that and you'll be as fat as a little tonky pig!"

Question: What in God's name is a tonky pig?? And for a supplemental , why tonky?

Dancing in the Kitchen

A combination of things got me pondering this - Beastie's childhood remenisences post and groving to Gwen Stefani in the car on the way to school with the AB. My strongest childhood memories are all about listening to songs in the car, and dancing around the kitchen to the radio.

In fact i've always thought that when (not if obviously!) I am invited to be on Desert Island discs I shall chose my 7 records by people, and be fantastically nostalgic. So in a sneak preview here they are ( and God do they date me!);

Downtown, Petula Clarke - not so much dancing in the kitchen with Mum to this one, but singing. Just hearing the introduction brings a clear picture of my Mum, 29, blonde and pretty damn gorgeous actually, singing her head off whilst burning the dinner.

A Little Love and Understanding, Charles Aznavour - my Dad had one of those Peugot 307's with three rows of seats in which he took us all to school, singing along to this in fake French accents. Wogan still plays it in the morning occasionally , which is truly terrifying!

Prime Time, The Tubes - Is time travel to a top floor flat, in Dundas st, New Town, Edinburgh, where me and my mate S lived in palatial , freezing squalour thinking it was all fabulously decadent darling!

Heaven, Psychadelic Furs - I lived in rural Staffs as a kid and so learning to drive was a huge deal - don't drive = don't get to go anywhere. This song was played really loud on a dodgy cassette player whilst hurtling round the stunning staffs moorlands countryside in my best mates bright yellow 2CV.

Find my Love, Fairground Attraction - TB's song , ahhh

Fall At Your Feet, Crowded House - played until the tape broke, afterAB was born and we brought her home from hospital, listening to the song and just sitting looking at her.

Rattlesnakes , Lloyd Cole and the Commotions - there is a stretch of road between Perth and Margaret River where the tarmac runs out and you hit gravel through bush , play this song, and keep an eye out for kangeroos.

Getting Away with it All My Life

I really hope Paris Hilton does her time in jug - equal treatment for all before the law, whilst I know not often achieved in practice is still a noble aspiration and if justice can't be seen to be done in this simple case then heaven help us!

And actually PH getting 45 days has cheered me up no end.

45 days also being the expected length of my convalescence - or at least the length of time before I can swim, and take the dog on long walks. So who will make the best use of the time baby???

Paris will have to share a room - but will probably be in an open prison with lots of facilites.
I'll be at home with books, knitting , a computer - and a spot of organising to do. Hmmmm...

Most annoyingly can't do any house work AT ALL for 3 weeks, this includes putting stuff in the oven - I may die!!

Big Wimp

Some people are genius when faced with problems, witty, urbane totally unself centred they write brilliant sparkling blog entries without a trace of self pity.

Unfortunately I'm not one of them. Let's be very clear here, when it comes to needles, hospitals and anything that comes in a white coat I'm pretty much scared shitless. I'm not sure whether this is because I come from a family full of medics, or in spite of that fact. Give me a grumpy old judge and a stinky, sweaty court room any day of the week.

I don't actually get admitted until 16 May and I'm already disappearing up my own arse in the proverbial puff of smoke. I keep looking at my belly and thinking how can there be something the size of a v large grapefruit in there and me know nothing about it! That would be over 4 months pregnant size of foetus and I certainly knew about that. But no, the usual standard size 14 jeans still fit....wonder if I'll go down to a size 12 after???

Face Book

I am now "On Facebook" as it is the preferred method of communication for a couple of my cousins - why they can't just email like everyone else?

It doesn't work for me - I'm too old, no one I know is on there, their kids are - which is a bit potentially embarassing.

But it set me thinking, when I left University I buggered off to Western Australia and didn't see any of my mates from there or school for 5 years. And I'm not sure that I particularly cared.

Once you are on face book or myspace (and you are the right age) everyone you ever knew can find you - you are permanently linked in to your school, uni and work networks. Which may be great.....it may also be not so great because you never get the chance to reinvent yourself, you potentially can't change without audience participation. It's kind of strange. Particularly for someone like me who, whilst I'm fine with being sociable I'm less good and having sociable thrust upon me. Hmm ...also on face book all the chicks look like godesses - wonder if they do irl ?

If you aren't on "the Book" and want to see what I'm whittering about - let me know and I'll invite you.