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2009

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To all of you that have blogged with me, listened to me, watched, and helped me over 2008 have a wonderful New Yea. May the best of 2008 be the worst of 2009. There wil be tails to tell and I will after I’ve finished this delicious fizzy shiraz…. HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL.

Hard hats and microphones

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How can a person lose an earring twice within as many weeks.
And they are fine earrings. I’ve looked in my drawers – chest of – under the dresser, in my clothes. It has jostled me.
But it is now bedtime. I have done me bit today.
I’ve got blisters from wearing size 3 wellington boots, I’m size four.
Heat rash from wearing a mans sized yellow anorak with zipper.
Itchy follicles from wearing a white hard hat on my little hard head, all in preparation for a life times experience of seeing a shopping city before it opened.
WESTFIELD is big, so big you could spend an entire life time there and still come out with exactly the same shopping that you can get in Bluewater, Thurrock, Chelmsford and Galway.
Still I am one of those folk that has divided opinion about WESTLIFE…..sorry WESTFIELD.

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Skating on thin ice

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One of the most prominent members of the Inuit community, Aqqaluk Lynge pleaded for an end to the expansion of Stansted Airport back in May 2006. His testimony, along with several other Innuit Elders, revealed how 5,000 years of living in the Arctic was being compromised by Global Warming.
People are dying as their world is thawing around them. They truly are skating on thin ice.
Bears are compromised. Good old Sarah Palin shrugs off the threat of their extinction by ingenuously declaring;
‘Oh! They’re okay they’ll adapt to living on the land.’
It’s a pity she hasn’t.
Our Government, that I voted in, are happily giving BAA the go ahead to extend the airport so that 35 million more of us will be taking to the skies adding to the problem.
Just when will they listen.

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A life in the weak of……

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On Monday I met up with a glittering woman who bought me a Nepalese meal and talked to me about writing and publishing. On Tuesday I met up with a clear-headed woman who talked to me about stand-up and shaping a show. On Tueday night I met up with a woman who talked to me … Read more

Road to Marrakech – Part Two

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Waking up to the call to prayer made a change from the East Sussex starlings. Our room overlooked the garden with two tortoises an array of plants and an old fishing net.
Once we got the electricity back we could see that our room was big, the bed semi-soft, the shower cubicle red earth colour, whilst one wall in the bedroom was tastefully covered in mutli-coloured woven bamboo.
The wavy lines, however, were not conducive to sunstroke, local beer belly or extreme exhaustion. It was like post boat spin when you’ve travelled to Zebrugga and back in a force 8 gale and then have to interview Mr. Roy Hattersly at the House of Commons – but that’s another story.

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blighty

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Apart from sun stroke, food poisening, exhaustion, and shock, I am very well thank you. Once I have unpacked, mowed the lawn, done the accounts, sorted my washing, driven to London, found the post box key, paid the bills and emptied my head I will be back to normal. See you then.

The Jolly and the Ivy

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This morning I went for my run. It was on with my heart moniter, trainers securely tied, and head down against the biting wind.
I ran along the river, the smells of ozone, the squawks of seagulls and the houseboats bobbing about in the water made for a wonderful 20 odd minutes.
Just as I got to St. Marys church a cyclist overtook me.
A woman.
A woman wearing a camel coat.
A woman wearing a camel coat, black shoes and blue, serge trousers.
A woman wearing a motley variety of clothing cycled past me, instead of using sturdy bicycle clips the woman opted for:
wait for it
TAN POP SOCKS.
TAN POP SOCKS!
TAN POP SOCKS over her blue, serge turn-ups.
Tan pop socks over her blue serge turn-ups as she cycled past me in Battersea.
That kept me going for at least 15 of those 20 odd minutes.
The fact that I noticed her meant I was back in the land of the living, the last few weeks, I’ve had my head up my own glycaemic index.

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LOOK! I’ve already had one bottle of champagne. played one game of scrabble which the Yorkshire terrior won. We are finally alone. All the girls are doing their own thing. My mother is happily esconced with some Dickens. Every body I know is with somebody else so all is well with the world. I am … Read more

Aberdeen Anguish

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The sky feels heavy, my eyebrows have sunk so low they have settled on my top lip like Che Guevara’s moustache.
My forehead is concertina-ed and there’s a very slight niggle of an ache starting at my temples.
My clothes smell of petrol – I had to pull the petrol pump pipe over the car as I had parked the wrong way round in the garage. When I pulled out the nozzle petrol spewed out over the boot, my thighs and my t-shirt. I arrived at my acupuncturist smelling like a North Sea oil rig.
Not that I have ever been on an oil rig, although Jim and I did once spend a day in bed in Aberdeen.
We were touring with our theatre group and had one day off between gigs. The weather was churlish and grey and we had nowhere else to go. The digs we were staying in had an interesting beamed ceiling and a big bed. There was no choice.
You could say that today feels a little like that Aberdeen afternoon. The petrol pump attendant was a Siekh from Stirling and Battersea feels as grey and gritty as Bannockburn.

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