What's in your bag?

Ages and ages and ages ago , Frobisher and Beast set a "what's in your bag" challenge. And I did take the picture but never posted it.

So here it is, ipod , phone, business cards, mirror, notebook, cheque book, purse, book and lippy (Mac natch!)

I think we looked good!

I have been thinking that this blog needs photos. So ...showjumping today.

They are horribly blurry, and I was a wimp and entered a really easy round ( and still got 4 faults) - but horse is still a bit green and tends to bolt!

The AB won her class though - red rossette - groovy.

And we've done the shopping and cleaned the house so this evening she and I have awarded ourselves pizza and popcorn - yay!

Sod's Law

However deadly quiet work has been , the minute the AB gets any time off school it goes fricking mental! And it's been the same this half term. 2 new instructions a day - papers arriving at 5 for meetings at 9 the next morning. Cases I thought had gone dead magically resurrecting.



The whole nine yards.



So sorry about the short , borning posts, but I need to clear the decks and we have indoor show jumping tomorrow - got to do better than the flat on my arse effort at Christmas!

All that glistens.............

My sister is off to the Brits today and is staying at her posh hotel in Park Lane. She has the outfit, she has the shoes, she has MY Italian handbag.

But sometimes it seems, glamour is only skin deep - the catering at the Brits is not, apparently, all that it could be. As, along with her tickets to get into the venue, she also has a food voucher which entitles her to..............................a can of Carling and a pasty.

I am not kidding.

Chance Encounters

Some years ago I fell in love with a man who was funny and sporty and had loads of mates and seemed to me to be everything I wanted to be in life. He fell for me fast and hard and then fell out of love with me equally fast - being slow to catch on I took longer to figure that out. He was quite difficult to be with, moody, changeable , quick to take offence - and even I , thick as I am , figured that had something to do with his cocaine and marjuana consumption.

Life moved on , I have another relationship, happy , stable, quieter.

I've always known where my former love is and how he is doing and we talk from time to time - and so we did yesterday. And he's living on his own, not sporty in fact so thin it's quite scary (got to have a bit of meat on a bloke) no mojo, no band - just an even bigger coke habit. And just to break your heart properly there were snatches in the conversation of the guy I used to know. I am left with this stupid desire to go round to his house, clean it , get the shopping in and cook his dinner - but that way madness lies.

Bored now!

There is definately a point around the beginning of February, when all those winter things that seemed so appealing back in October have definately lost their shine.

I am now officially fed up of the following things ;

"Bracing" walks with the dog - bracing in this context means frozen solid and miserable.

Comfort food - particularly anything involving either chips or mash.

Cosy evenings at home by the fire, which in reality occur because we are snowed in/cut off by flood water/too knackered to go anywhere*.

*delete as appropriate.

My sister , on the other hand, has won tickets to the Brits - from Tesco of all places. They are putting her up in the Park Lane Hilton and she gets to go to the after show party too! Obviously she is having a "what do i wear?" crisis and for some reason is ringing me about it. WHAT DO I KNOW????? I am in my mid 40's and live in the middle of nowhere!!!

What is occuring.

My buddy in Victoria and her family are all fine - hurrah and still have working internet so even better.

What's happening here ? - work mostly to be honest. I'm giving out lots of free initial advice still but some of it turning into paying jobs which is not to be sniffed at. It's a sign of the times that I am off to an "Advanced Insolvency Updater" course on Thursday morning - bet that will be a bundle of laughs, and it's in Holborn.........yukkky.

The conclusion to be drawn from "snow week" was that sitting indoors on your backside does you no good at all. I rode only once last week and the horse went brilliantly once she realised we were going to be indoors! She did give me a rather "old fashioned look" as I led her out of the stable into the snow, it was clearly intended to convey the phrase " you have got to be fucking joking!" But once in the relative warmth of the indoor arena things perked up no end. The downside was that after a week of inactivity an hours show jumping training meant I couldn't actually walk properly the next day!

This week I am not repeating the same mistake , I am walking and riding come sleet, rain or snow. And there is no excuse really as there is a heated pool and sauna just across the road that I can go to to warm up after.

On the voodoo front, I've now had two sessions of accupuncture and two of hypnotherapy. I think I'm calmer - a bit, and the pain seems to be subsiding. I have to give it a fair go, can't expect to go from feeling crap to feeling brilliant over night and frankly chaps - I am all out of other options.

The Italian students have been and gone. They ate all before them and watched a lot of telly and didn't really say much - so that was money for old rope.

Friends

I am very lucky in that I have lots of good friends. I am even luckier in that I have two very exceptional ones, S &S who I have known since I was 18 and would do anything for. Sadly for me neither of them live in the UK anymore, S1 is in the Phillipines with her family. S2 is in Australia.

I hold powers of attorney for both of them which means looking after their UK property, and in one case their parents ashes!

S2's place is in rural Victoria. I was speaking to her on Thursday and she said temperatures had been over 45 degrees for weeks only going "down" ha ha to 35 degrees at night. She was sending the kids to school with their lunch boxes frozen solid so they had a chance to make it to lunch without "turning".

So having seen the bush fires on tv tonight I am now officially shitting myself. Not sure what the chances are of her having internet or phone. She isn't in either of the towns that have been completely burnt out so far. Fingers and everything else crossed here.

They put me through it these two - S1 was in Sri Lanka on a beach holiday when the Tsunami struck , she was fine, here's hoping our luck holds!

Week ahead

It's going to be a busy week. Plenty of billable stuff to do - hurrah! Another article to write - on personal bankruptcy this time and gearing up for the second rounds of accupuncture and hypnotherapy which are happening on Thursday and Friday.

In addition we've got a couple of Italian students staying with us until Saturday. I am officially a freak in that I don't find looking after people work, I will quite happily iron your shirts, cook your dinner, bake cakes and ferry you around the place. I enjoy it. It's also nice to be bought presents and thanked for looking after people, not many legal practice clients do that.

Lets face it what people really want in litigation is for the judge to say "oh you poor dear, how could such a terrible thing have happened to you, let me put it right," and that is , of course, never ever going to happen. So there is always some degree of dissatisfaction at the end of a case, the only question is how much! Although, I did have one very nice email from a client this week saying how pleased his company were with the service they had from me, so that was nice.

It snowed today and should still be white over tomorrow , I love it , so pretty!