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!