NYE

The dreaded day has come. Actually, I'm hoping it's going to be good fun.
I have somehow ended up going to a 60s/70s London nightclub where fancy dress is compulsory and part of the entertainment comprises a swimming pool and a bikini.
My costume is ready - a pink and brown spotted wraparound dress with a collar, kneehigh black boots, a wide gold belt, a purple bobbed wig and a black cap. I may even post a picture at some point.
My other half is wearing a brown stripy shirt, beige cord flares, and a turquoise and orange tank top which is about three sizes too small (vintage, you see).

We are going to look hot!

Having just read my revised IT acceptable use policy I feel blogging is probably not included. So am going to have to contain myself until the evening.

Now all I have to do is pack everything (including a pillow and a duvet cover), get a train from Newmarket, buy a tube ticket, then arrive at somewhere between Brixton and Clapham. Am bringing big, strong, other half to carry heavy stuff. I will take pillow and duvet cover.

What with snow everywhere, the smallest and most pathetic single track station known to man at Newmarket and tube strikes predicted for the big night, something tells me it may not be as straight forward as it sounds. So I will bring some of my Xmas miniatures to make the journey that bit easier to take.

Teeheehee.



Spare a thought for the people who have no-one to share it with, nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat.

And if you can, say a prayer for my friend Ben who lost his brother in the most horrific way just a couple of months ago. My thoughts will be with him while everyone else is rejoicing.

With that sobering thought, I would like to wish everyone a happy new year!

Cats in sinks

Just found this website (via several other websites). And I love it!
It's at www.catsinsinks.com and as soon as I get an appropriate moment I'm going to put my cat in a sink and make her the star of the show!

Back to work

Christmas is now officially over. I can tell this by the fact that I am back at work despite all the lovely dangerously hard snow lying around to be formed into a lethal snowball which will maim some poor child.

So I am going to do a bit of a round-up of my Christmas.

things I have eaten that were good
roast goose
roast potatoes
pigs in blankets
wild mallard (yes, my family is a little bit posh)
pheasant
tenderstem broccoli and beans in hollandaise sauce
mussels in calvados and cream
huge quantities of fried bacon, egg, sausage, potatoes and beans
baileys truffles
sticky toffee pudding
chocolate brownie muffins with white chocolate sauce

things which I have eaten which I now wish I had not eaten
a brussel sprout
huge quantities of fried bacon, egg, sausage, potatoes and beans
rather a lot of stodgy white bread (had a bit of a dicky tummy my doctor friend told me this was the best natural remedy to..errr...block me up)

things I would like to have eaten more of
chocolate generally
tenderstem broccoli in hollandaise sauce
sticky toffee pudding
nuts

Moving on...

good presents
hair straighteners
oxford concise dictionary
jewellery
a book
a sudoku book
an astronauts pen which writes upside down, underwater and in space
various vases
several candles

unexpected presents
enormous animal slippers
a microwave
The Bends, by Radiohead
small pots of alcoholic cream to add to coffee (like the milk things you get in hotels)
a very fancy notebook
a popcorn making set
a mirror

unwanted presents
actually none really, I think I've done quite well

games played
very small quantity of trivial pursuit until my three-year-old niece overturned the board (she didn't like the brown pie/cheeses)
about two minutes of QI until my grandfather decided he wanted to watch the Two Ronnies

christmas television watched
half of strictly come dancing - then it was tea time
French and Saunders Christmas special

carols sung
all the best ones at midnight mass - O Little Town of Bethlehem, Once in Royal, O Come all ye Faithful, The First Noel (actually that's probably my least favourite).
Not Hark the Herald (disappointing)

side-splitting laughs enjoyed while three-year-old niece made up songs involving being tickly in the ear and various versions of rudolph
too many to count

drunk sisters picked up from town in the early hours of Christmas morning being propped up by my slightly drunken boyf
one

All in all, a good Christmas was had by all.

Some pictures

This picture was taken of a boy jumping off a wall in Akko, Israel. It was a long way down, but, showing off to his friends, he showed no fear.
This signpost was on a road circling the Dead Sea near En Gedi. I'm going to get it printed onto a skinny t-shirt...

Christmas is coming

And Frangelita is getting fat! Well, I will be come Christmas day when my lovely mum cooks up a big festive goose with all the trimmings.
I have noticed a few people have been coming up with pro/con Christmas points so I thought I would join in.

I'm glad it's Christmas because...
I'm allowed to sing Christmas carols at the top of my voice;
It's the only time of the year it's truly acceptable to eat so much you can barely move;
I get a long weekend away with my parents, other half, sister, Grandad and wee niece;
People don't look at you quite so funny when you wonder around wearing silly hats;
I get to drink mulled wine and Baileys;
Shopping!
That feeling of anticipation which I just can't shake off;
I can get up at a ridiculously early hour to open my stocking even though it only has an apple, a squashed banana, a satsuma and three nuts in it;
It's quite nice to think about the birth of Jesus;
Everything looks pretty;
my dad roasts chestnuts on an open fire...

I wish it wasn't Christmas because...
Everyone is really drunk and raucous and aggressive;
I have to spend three hours queuing in m&s for a pasta salad (ok, a cake) because someone in front of me is buying the whole shop to give to her aunt;
There's too much pressure to buy more and more stuff and I'm really skint;
You can't avoid repeats of 'family' viewing like Morcambe and Wise;
Other people might have spent more on you than you have on them which is a big cause of anxiety;
My dad will look daggers at me all Christmas if I don't eat at least one Brussel sprout;
I have to do more work in less time because of bank holidays;
The absence of people who are close to me who have died is more obvious;
People with no-one to spend Christmas with kill themselves (obviously not all of them)


That's all I can think of right now. I think overall I'm glad it's Christmas.

Skipping stones

It has been a labour of - well, not love, but of something akin to it - to get this picture up. It was taken at a stream in a village called Ballingeary in Ireland. My Dad, boyfriend pictured and my brother were trying to teach me how to skip stones. I am not very good at this. It is a nice action picture I think. I also really love the jeans I'm wearing in the pic. Sadly, they wore out a long time ago. I suspect they might be a little on the small side now anyway. One day I'll find another pair of jeans I love as much...

Been away

I have been absent from the blogosphere for some time after a series of wild weekends, a pickpocketing incident and a lot of hangovers. I'm recovering from one now actually. I read something recently about why people drink again after feeling so bad the next morning. Surely we should know that we are going to regret it? I threw up very inelegantly this afternoon (this was assisted, I felt very poorly and it seemed the quickest way of getting the poison out of my system) but it sort of took me by surprise and I accidentally bit on my tongue really hard. This was a very, very bad idea and I suspect my tongue will be sore for a long time. Right now I'm vowing to avoid booze for a long time but with Christmas coming...

last weekend was a big bender in London with a pair of my gay.friends. Being a non-single lady but loving to dance and generally be the centre of attention without random people trying to stick their tongues down my throat, a night out with the gays seemed like a fantastic plan. It was great although I've never seen so many men kissing other men. We went to Heaven which was really good fun. It was not there I was pickpocketed, despite the fact that I had my wallet protruding visibly from my skirt. No, that happened within 15 minutes of arriving at Camden Market the following day. Did lead to a strange weekend though, cos I was so upset (almost considered taking the police up on their offer of victim support) that the boys said they would lend me as much money as I needed. A foolish thing to say to a girl on a rare visit to London shopping, it was like having two very trendy, very young sugar daddies. Unfortunately, I do have to pay the money back...

Little and Large

Not the two comedians but my Dad and a tiny bird which decided to make friends with him. This bird nestled on his arm, sat on his shoulder while he walked along and cosied up as he stroked it with comparatively gigantic fingers - all unsolicited. It's strange, that animals always go for the people who aren't really that keen - he claims to hate cats but will invariably wake up with one sitting on his lap, purring contentedly.

I'm going to be a bit naughty

And blog at work again. Teehee. Am in empty office, no-one will know!!!

Damn it. Not empty any more. Must be surreptitious.

My mother has some really cool software which allows you to print pictures onto the cd. So I chose a picture I took of a dolphin in the Red Sa. I forgot, however, to consider the fact that there is a big hole in the middle of the cds. So my poor dolphin was tragically mutilated. Here he is, before the tragic accident.

I'm going to get a bit cocky now...

HOhoho it's letting me now. Although it still won't let me put the picture of me skipping stones on it.

This picture was taken from the Mount of Olives and shows the wall which divides East Jerusalem from West Jerusalem - along with the rest of the West Bank. It's a pretty daunting sight.

As you can see

It didn't work. Damn it! Maybe the blasphemy did not appeal to the god of technology. Another attempt, perchance?

Hmmm...your images are being uploaded to blogger. Well you already said that and it was a lie wasn't it? You even claimed it had been successful and all I had to do was click done. I did. You didn't.

See it's not even like I'm being deliberately dense or that I'm completely rubbish when it comes to technology. I'm good at figuring stuff out. And I'm not even getting any entertaining error messages. It claims to be working. Clearly, my computer is a man.

Still says it's uploading. liar.

Did I say that?

Am going to have a flick through some blogs before publishing this post. Hmmph.

ten minutes later

This is not even funny anymore. The little box with the message in it? It's disappeared. And I'm sure I didn't tell it to.

Good God. It's a miracle. I decided to tempt fate and post the silliest pic in my posession. And it seems to have worked!!!!

Another attempt...

I don't think my computer likes me. I am still trying to upload some pictures. And instead my dear little laptop just continuously tells me loading your pictures are being uploaded to blogger. But I know they're not. For one, the evidence of my eyes which says look, no pictures, and for another, the fact that it hasn't got that little triangle with the exclamation mark and the little lines coming from it which always happens.

Ok scratch that. It has now changed it's mind and is telling me to click done.

I am going to do this.

Machine is thinking. But little explorer flag/world is not going round and round. No sign yet of picture on my post.

Maybe I should just, as they say, publish and be damned! Or as I nearly typed, oublish and be damned.

But I do really want to put some nice pictures on the blog. And for some reason I feel if I start fannying about with cds and photographs on my screen at work, someone might notice that this is not actually part of my job description. So I have to do it here.

COME ON COMPUTER YOU CAN DO IT!

I'm going to publish this post now and see what happens.

Cat yoga

Many poses in yoga are inspired by animals - downward-facing dog, cat pose and so on. So you would think my feline friend, Missy, would have some appreciation of the forms and poses.

But no.

I do yoga occasionally and even more occasionally I practise in my living room at home (which is only just big enough). When I do this there is bound to be something involving lying parts of my body on the floor. Invariably, when I get to these horizontal positions, an inquisitive little moggy face appears at my side.

First she just sort of pads at my outstretched limbs. She might sniff it a little bit, maybe give it a little lick. But then she decides that this limb is a game/threat and wraps her little legs around it and attacks, trying to disembowel me with all her might.

This is really quite distracting when you are trying to remember to breath in as you move your arms up but out when they come down and to the side while removing tension from the rest of your body... sound at all familiar? I always find it a little entertaining that yoga teachers tell you to do something which is wholly unnatural and entirely weird and then tell you to think about your breathing? I'm just trying desperately not to fall over on my bum.

Or, perhaps even more embarassingly, fart audibly. Someone did that near the end of a silent yoga class recently. She laughed it off and apologised. I think I would die inside. I'd also be scared it would set off a whole string of other wind-related things. None of which should be scared with a calm, relaxing yoga class.

Moving back to Missy, I must confess to being a little jealous of her. Her downward-facing dog is so much better than mine and that thing where she lifts her leg up stretching like a tiny chimney to the ceiling, that's just really impressive. I suppose her joints just work a little differently.

Must go now, Lost is on and I don't want to miss bad boy Sawyer. Mmmmm

I give up

I have just made three unsuccessful attempts at uploading one, single picture onto this blog. And the joys of my dial-up connection mean it has just failed. And then failed again. And then one more time. I do not have sufficient patience for this. Which is probably why, with my superslow system, I do not blog more frequently. The thinking and the writing take no time - well, obviously some, but you know what I mean - it is the technology deciding whether or not its going to do anything which makes it all happen. And I guess sometimes if I waited long enough it would work. But Lost is on in about ten minutes and I'm not very good at blogging and watching tv at the same time. It's strange, I can do many things at once but actually watching and taking in television and reading command my sole attention. I can't even eat properly and watch telly at the same time. Well I can, but I get tired of washing the tomato sauce stains out of all my favourite tops. Funny how hard it is to get-fork-into-food-then-into-mouth without looking. Not something you would think of as being particularly hard, comparatively speaking, if you were to lose your sight, but I bet it is.

Some pictures

This first picture was the sun setting over the red sea in Egypt. Then the village where I used to live, Lidgate, in the snow. And a rather amusing road sign in En Gedi, the Dead Sea, Israel.

Training

I have been absent for a while because I have been being trained in the art of running a newsdesk. Exciting stuff. What this really means is that I have been sitting through days of boring lectures while being forced to occasionally come up with a vaguely relevant idea or opinion, with a night of very heavy drinking with fellow journalists sandwiched in the middle.

On this occasion I didn't know any of my fellow "delegates", as they like to refer to us, but this did not stop us from all getting very drunk. And rather unfortunately, there were only four girls of the 16 people there and one of those did not stay in the hotel. The other two decided to call it a night at around 10.30pm, meaning I ended up hitting the town with six blokes. All I can say is that I drank an awful lot of beer and ended up sharing an awful lot of personal information with virtual strangers. I have come to the conclusion that binge-drinking probably isn't a great idea. The second day of the course was considerably less fun as I spent most of it wanting to throw up and chain-drinking cold water. Not even the trusty hotel fry-up cleared up the hangover.