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!