When John McCain dies it's going to be very bad!

Well you may think it is high time that I took my head out of my arse and had a look at the outside world...and you would be right.

Oh dear I know Barack Obama had many reasons not to want Hillary as vice president but I think that is a failure of nerve that he is going to live to regret for ever.

Sarah Palin is clearly a bloody nightmare ; doesn't believe in sex education in schools (doesn't look like the parents did a very good job in her house!); doesn't beleive in global warming; has never travelled any further afield than Canada and Mexico. And has all the empathy and intellecutal depth of the moose heads she sticks on her walls. But she clearly has the "Daily Mail" factor going for her in spades. Putting the governor's private jet up for sale on ebay was a political masterstroke. If you don't think about her policies for too long they almost sound sensible - "We are importing a lot of oil - that's bad" "We could dig up Alaskan oil that would be good. And so if a few polar bears die there's plenty more and this global warming stuff is a myth anyway."

I admit that she gives me hives. But I think part of what makes her so scary is that she represents the America that none of us card carrying lefty Europeans want to admit even exists. The red necked bit in the middle. We've seen Deliverance. We know they are out there - looks like they are coming to a White House near you very soon.

Doing something right?

Our lovely French exchange student goes home next week. We will miss her she is so sweet. And she said "I am really going to miss all the lovely food you cook when I go back to France.."



So I'm not totally hopeless!

Head down...but doesn't that leave your arse exposed?

So how is it all going? The family are OK - TB is working hard as his factory gears up for their annual insanely busy phase. AB is back to school and loving everything about school apart from the actual lessons. She tried "forgetting" to do her homework on Thursday, nice try, but it only resulted in her being woken up at 6am and having to finish it before school, don't think she will try that one again in a hurry. Her father never shouts at anyone but he is really difficult to argue with.

As for me, I have stuff to do..which is good. But I have a confession...........although I work hard for my clients I don't have a really giant legal brain (although when I go for the complete head and body transplant I'm going to ask for the brain augmentation chip as well, might as well get the whole package). I had an interesting trial in Manchester on Monday where although I won I did come out thinking "Lippy not one of your best performances, in fact face it babe you were more than a bit shit." Client is happy enough but I am really really not.

I want to be on top of my game and doing my best work, but I seem to be skidding along from one fire fighting job to the next. And my confidence in my own abilities is pretty low to say the least. Added to which I am having to go out and "sell" what I do in a competitive market and what I really want to say is " actually, I'm a bit shit at the moment, I would go and see someone else if I were you."

Oh well, keep trying eh, it's never going to improve if I give up.

Diet and fitness wise , I'm also at the point where I have to stop moaning and just accept that it will never get any easier. I've lost a stone since the beginning of the summer and am a fairly respectable size 12-14 (except shirts, I think I just have to give up on shirts, boobs and shirts are just never going to be comfortable together, at least not with all the buttons done up!). I walk the dog every day for 40 minutes, ride twice a week and go to the gym three times a week so not too shabby for an old bird. I kind of feel as if I'm getting nowhere - I've entered the loan horse and me for a local mini hunter trial in October and another dressage competition. But she is the sort of horse where you have to work for every stride so if either of those is not going to end in disaster I need to be fitter!

Back to School

I always liked going back to school for a new year - new pencils, new uniform, nice new exercise books. And it's even better now that it isn't actually me who is going back to school!



But in sympathy with the atmosphere today I made sure I cleared off the lingering nasty cases last week so that I could attack some new ones today with vigor! And low and behold a couple of new cases turned up to be attacked , hurrah! And went and did the marketing thing at lunch and networked my little socks off, then had payback and went for coffee with a friend . She is off to do research in Egypt for 10 weeks the lucky thing.



Anyway came home, finished the accounts and did some admin and everything is still looking shiny for tomorrow.



In other news - don't look now but I've been coffee free for a whole week, shhh , don't jinx it. White tea with pomegranate and a blueberry yoghurt fruit tea - in other words just drinking vats of hot water.

Letting the side down...

I have to say that it is very difficult to lecture my child on being a responsible citizen when between them her aunts, uncles and grandparents have variously;

- run off to join the circus,
- been the bodyguard of the president of an African Country,
- been sent to prison for telling a judge to fuck off during their divorce case,
- had 5 children by the age of 23,
- had the pub close on the day of their funeral because it had lost it's best customer
- travelled overland from London to Australia in a Land Rover pausing only to have a baby on the back seat en route
- defended a charge to a public order offence on the basis that none of the witnesses had seen them or they would have mentioned the naked man with purple bollocks.

There is no hope, or at least.............very little

Credit Crunchie

So Lippy - enough of the eating habits, how is the business going?

Well the summer has been very patchy to tell you the truth. Some work, but not what you'd call steady and while we won't starve we won't be booking a Carribean cruise any time soon either. It seems that work is picking up as we move into September but there is a common thread of people with very horrible problems who are at a high risk of not being able to pay my fees. So am i offering them a no win no fee deal? No I AM NOT, in the interests of self preservation I am making them pay on account. If they want to take stupid risks they can do it with their money not mine.

But I've not been able to avoid the universal problem of the bankrupt client - unfortunatley i had stupidly instructed a barrister to act (because I had known this client for a long time) and now I have to pay £10k of barristers fees out of my own pocket....ho hum...........that will learn me.

What's to be done then - two things really, head down and do the work, and get out and meet the people who have the work to hand out.

And at the end of a year of moaning about being self employed would I go back to being a salary slave - NO!

I would really really like

Really really really like .. a cup of tea and a slice of a victoria sandwich (with jam and fresh cream).

I am developing a dreadful masochistic streak and have taken to watching the Hairy Bakers just to torture myself with their tales of chocolate chip cookies, scones and home made bread...........

Testing my resolve!

I have now completed four whole weeks of this no wheat no dairy thing, and I'm sort of getting used to it and some of the choices are becoming more automatic. Always the salad, never the sandwich , black coffee, no ice cream for me thank you - oh,and definatley no cake *sigh*.

I'm gearing myself up for another major challenge in September - the caffiene has to go! I am down from 8 cups of coffee a day to 2 anyway as I don't like it nearly so much without milk so hopefully the last effort shouldn't be too bad. And the diet coke and the dark chocolate - those little life rafts in a pure water sea have to go too.

I may well sink in a sea of self pity this week - I am being abandoned, the AB has gone to my Mum's for a week and then her Aunty's for another 3 days after that. And the TB is off to France with work - ho hum..........I shall hit the gym (re-assessment session booked for 9am on Tuesday in a rare fit of enthusiasm), ride the horse, swim and walk the dog until his little legs fall off. I shall do lots of work and my office shall be a shining beacon of efficiency and toil. Either that or I shall be slumped on a sofa watching Casino Royal on DVD until the telly screams for mercy!

Summer Reads

Lippy reccomends books to see you through the rest of the summer and into the autumn ;

1. A Bit of A Blur - Alex James (didn't like him but a good read)
2. The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo -Stieg Larsson (I love Swedish Crime writers and this one is an absolute corker)
3. The Steep Road to Garbdale - Iain Banks (son of Crow Road and none the worse for it)
4. The Bellini Card - Jason Goodwin ( I love love this series - fascinating)
5. Garden Spells - Sarah Addison Allen (drippy chick lit with more than a nodding aquiantance to Practical Magic, for when you want to turn your brain power down to "low")


I couldn't finish Sepuchure by Kate Mosse, or Down River by John Hart both of which I found tiresome and utterly predictable! Today's Waterstones haul is Exit Music - Ian Rankin, Ghost - Robert Harris and The Draining Lake by Arnaldur Indridason ; I'll let you know how I get on!

Beaming with Pride!

"Hairspray the School Musical" starts it's run on Sky soon - why do I care, because the director is my gorgeous and hugely talented junior relative Katfish. (No I'm not telling you how we are related we just are, and no I'm not her mum!)

She has been working so hard that I haven't spoken to her for ages, apart from a few voicemails telling me that "Denise is lovely"

So do watch, and do be nice.

I'll be sure to pass it on when she comes to crash in the country for some much needed R&R!

Landlady from hell?

I don't mind house guests, really I don't, but for the last couple of weeks I seem to have been running a small boarding house!

We have the permanent residents; me, the TB, the AB (who is becoming markedly less Angelic as teenagedom approaches but that's a different post) and the French exchange student.

Additionally in the last 7 days we have had at various times, my best mate and her daughter (all the way from the Philippines ), my sister, her husband and her son (all the way from the West Midlands) and the FES's boyfriend. And it has been lovely to see everyone - shame about the monsoon weather that the brought with them. But goodness it's hard work for the catering staff - i.e me. I have done the full reportoire of roasts, lasagne, chinese noodle things and now I am truly running out of ideas. I suspect a few evenings with the cookbook collection are in order.

And whilst we are on culinary matters, having given up almost everything my chilli consumption has gone through the roof - I've moved on from chilli sauce ( bit girlie with all that sugar) and on to Capstan Full Strength Sri-Lankan chilli oil. It's so good it should probably be illegal!

Purity Update

I completely understand why people walk out of rehab in a strop after two weeks. In week one you get the instant payback - quick 5lb weight loss, better sleep all the nasties from your initial habit start to fade away. Week two brings the set backs - I didn't fall off the waggon don't get me wrong but yesterday had major "attack" - hideous bout of pain, in the middle of a shopping centre 30 miles from home, I had to sit down for half an hour and wait for the horse pill pain killers to kick in. And that raises all the "what the hell am I bothering with this for?" questions.

I hope it's just things "shifting back into place" rather than getting any worse - but fuck me it's depressing and it's raining, and it's August so nothing much is happening....well apart from a constant stream of visitors. Best mate and child last week and sister, husband and child arriving on Monday...which is nice, hope it stops raining so we can go out somewhere.

Sorry to be such a miserable git.

Wrong phase of the moon????

I can't help but feel that the first week in August is not my luckiest time of year.

This time last year I was in hospital, on a men's ward .in the next bed to a convict who was chained to a prison warder - being pumped full of drugs that I didn't need for an illness that I didn't have!

Splendid!

This year I'm short of work and stuck with a bunch of slow paying clients. I really hate threatening clients with bankruptcy proceedings but when you know they could pay you and just won't - even though they were more than happy with the work, then breaking point does arrive. So the first threatening letter has gone with another to follow shortly. There are only two thank goodness, that are really really taking the piss.

I know I am in much better financial shape than many, I don't owe anybody anything (no loans baby) and I have savings.

I had one potential client on the phone today who almost made me cry - working their ass off in a pub business and making less than £100 per week - because the brewery are taking all the profit. I am not sure there is much I can do, I'll certainly try but I think they just signed up to the usual brewery shit deal.

Whatever you may think of me - promise me one thing - never ever take on the tenancy of a pub.

Purity Sucks!

I have been wheat and dairy free for just over a week now. And the early morning craving for a Venti Latte with a double shot and cinnamon syrup is not getting any less...but I persevere. Honey and lemon juice isn't the same at all.

Caffiene and sugar are a much bigger problem. I am still drinking a black coffee with one sugar at least once a day - a huge improvement from my 8 cups a day habit but too much caffiene non the less. This is next weeks mission - lose the diet coke and the black coffees and drink lemon tea instead. Vile stuff I know but frankly anything that can help the pain levels here...things are pretty desparate and desparate measures are called for.

I am hoping that at the end of two months I can move on to a slightly less restrictive regime which will allow me to have weekends "off" - I've found a chocolate almond cake that I intend to bake on my very first weekend "off". Meantime Indian Food is pretty much my salvation - a wheat and dairy free treat with plenty of chilli.

Feral and Partially notcturnal.

Work is still deadly quiet, I hope something turns up soon.
In the meantime the work I have I'm doing early in the morning and at night,

Otherwise in the lovely daylight hours I've been riding, been to lovely Holkham Beach (twice) unfortunatley not with the horse (that would have been fantastic) I love love that Beach, white sands for miles and pine woods behind them and lovely clear water. Swimming in the sea wasn't actually all that cold. Swimming in the river at St Helens in Thetford Forest was THAT COLD but beautiful all the same, and you get a view from the middle of the river when you are swimming that is so different and so much better than what you can see from the bank.

I did do one thing I went to a business networking coffee morning - there are so many business networking organisations that you could go to an event every day and meet more web designers and reiki practitioners than any one would need in an entire lifetime, but sometimes they throw up a good lead. The thing is to work out which opportunities will work for you and which won't!...it's a puzzlement.

10 things I've never done

As I'm a bit short on inspiration. Things I've never done;

1. Kissed a girl ( or any other sort of girl on girl sexual activity)
2. Been arrested
3. Taken illegal drugs
4. Been in a fight
5. Been in a car accident
6. Been to Disneyland (or world or any variety of Disney theme park)
7. Fitted into a pair of size 8 jeans ( at least once my age was in double figures!)
8. Been in a rock band
9. Done a parachute jump
10. Drunk Tequila

I realise that makes me sound terminally boring, so a few things I have done;

1. Eaten kangaroo ( and shot it first)
2. Milked cows for a living
3. Surfed on beaches with no Shark nets
4. Been on a night safari in Natal
5. Dived over coral reefs in the South China Sea
6. Spent the night in a bothy on Rannock Moor
7. Sailed a yacht across the channel over night
8. Climbed the Pyramid at Chichen Itza (back when you still could and the pyramids of the Sun & Moon)
9. Run down 5th Avenue to get the last elevator to the top of the Empire State building last thing at night. Way better at night........
10. Applied to be a judge ( and got knocked back!)
11. Taken too many degrees!

Still sound like a boring fucker!

I should have done this ages ago

It only takes 6 weeks to break a habit apparently.

So, it a bit of a last ditch attempt to aviod any more surgery, I am doing what I should have done 12 months ago and cutting wheat, dairy , sugar and caffiene out of my diet completely.

I already eat plenty of fresh fruit and veg and red meat only a couple of times a week so those things aren't a big problem. The meat I eat is organic so no hormone issues there.

However for a "venti latte with two shots and cinnamon syrup" junkie like myself this is horrible. Thank goodness it's really hot so that I'm not missing my mid day coffee but mornings are a bit rough.

Still if Ronnie Wood can do his de-tox without keeling over or giving in I can do mine!....at least I can still have a couple of white wines on a weekend!

Other people's lives

Do you ever long to know what it is like to be someone else or is it just me? Judging by the proliferation of celeb magazines and websites it clearly isn't just me, but I'm not just fascinated by famous people.

I find myself on the train into Liverpool St, looking at the windows of all the flats in Bethnal Green and thinking "what do they all do?"

At school I was fascinated by a girl at school,we will call her Tracy, who lived in a big glass sixties "pad" complete with white shag pile carpets and a swimming pool, her Mum drove a lotus and looked quite a lot like Farah Fawcett Majors. I didn't actually like Tracy that much and we were never particular friends, but I just wanted to know what her life felt like, mostly because it was so different from mine.

Currently I have the same fascination for Alice who keeps her horse at the same livery as mine, and I suspect is how Katie Price would be if she had never been Jordan - i.e normal chest size, really good rider (pushing at the boundaries of international standard), extremely pretty and married with a couple of kids. Also very good company. I like her a lot more than I liked Tracy!

That's part of the fascination of blogs isn't it? The insight into other people's lives, or at least how other people perceive their lives to be - which may be something quite different.

Reverse Phsychology?

Work is still a bit quiet, ticking over , but hardly busy.

So, as yesterday was the hottest of the year so far, I packed up the kids and the dog and headed for the big sands on the north Norfolk coast. And I have to say it was lovely, blue sky, blue sea and soft sand. We picniced and I did fully intend to swim in the sea, but between walking the dog up the beach and reading Alex James "A Bit of A Blur" I never got around to it.

I had left a message on the office voicemail to say I could be contacted on my mobile phone ...I lied, Orange mobile network coverage in Cromer was patchy to say the very least. This had the heartening result that after a very relaxing day I then felt loved and wanted (in the professional sense) due to a barrage of voicemails and incensed email messages! Hurrah!

It is all in the timing.

I am a morning person, and whilst in it's own way this is all well and good, it means that I don't really do evenings. At least I don't do them well. It's as much as I can do to eat my dinner, drink a couple of glasses of wine , read a bit of a book or watch a bit of telly and then pass out on the sofa about 10 o'clock.

Don't misunderstand me I can work of an evening - in fact some of the best legal work gets done when you can tune out a few of the multitudinous channels in your brain and just focus on one. But proper evening activities - classes, going to the pub, exercising in an evening are all a bit...well beyond me really.

My mother is a complete night owl and has always found the fact of my early bedtimes a matter of intense annoyance. In fact when I was a child she used to come to my room and wake me up and make me do things - like tidy up and bake cakes. Apart from the fact that this was clearly slightly insane behaviour it also made me even more intransigent in my view that evenings were for sleeping.

Later on they became for sleeping and sex...obviously. In fact once I had found someone that I could have sex with at home of an evening , without all the hassle of going to parties and copping off, I pretty much stopped going to parties. Which is a bit sad as I was only 24 at the time. But frankly I really hadn't been much good at parties, hardly the life and soul, usually I was either trying to cop off or had given up and was asleep under a pile of coats in the corner.

I do like dancing though, but it's better in the afternoon. And I like talking to people..and I can be quite chatty and charming ...but I am way WAY better company at lunch than at dinner, and at breakfast when no one else wants to talk at all...I'm a wow.