My Sister sometimes forwards me emails about my posts; one the other day read: ‘Ah, your Sister with her espirit d’escalier wit’ I nodded to myself knowingly, then googled ‘espirit d’escalier’ because I don’t know what it means. Something to do with the spirit of a French staircase?

Wikipedia told me it’s actually the French for ’staircase wit’, or thinking of a joke when it’s far too late to tell it. He may have a point, considering I’m getting around to telling you about Saturday the following Friday. I could have trained a chaffinch to visit you all individually and sing it in the same amount of time. It might help if you think of Saturday as a poorly dubbed Lindt advert, except the commentary sounds out 5 days after you’ve watched the advert, switched the TV off and couldn’t really care less. Continue reading Saturday

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Good news: I am employed!

Not so good news: For a month.

Good news again: It may be for a month but it doesn’t involve hotpants and changing my name to Candy!

(Apparently I shouldn’t have been referring to myself as ‘unemployed’ for a start, I should have been telling people I’ve ‘gone freelance’, which is the luxury term for unemployment used by people in creative jobs. The Conservatives should apply this sort of rebranding technique nationwide: ‘2.5 million in the UK have gone freelance’ sounds quite nice. Hot damn, I should be a spin doctor.) Continue reading (Yes, this is late)

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‘It says there’s going to be more tube strikes this month’ said my mother at breakfast on Sunday, ‘have you worked out an alternative route into work?’

‘I’m unemployed’

‘Oh yes sorry. That won’t matter then’

She had momentarily forgotten that I am no longer a working woman. I am now a lady who lunches, provided the lunches are free. The fake honeymoon that temporarily swept this issue under the carpet is now over; I left In Denial Hotel with great poise and dignity by crying openly at our last all you can eat dinner buffet: ‘She’s sad to be leaving’ Ed told Cliff Richard, pointing at me, just in case anyone thought I was crying because he’d told me I had eaten so much feta this week that my arse might be soon visible from Space, or that he’d spied me having intimate relations with the Speedo Russian and wanted a pretend divorce. Continue reading Unemployment and Cats

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This comes to you from a sun lounger in Crete (the ostrich approach to unemployment: go on a minibreak!) and since you’re possibly on a come-down after the double bank holiday sugar rush I won’t inflict any smug sun lounger knee ‘n sea shots on you. And if you can’t imagine what a knee ‘n sea shot is then you’ve pruned your Facebook friends wisely.  

Ed and I have told the hotel that we’re on our honeymoon so we get all the free stuff. Everywhere we venture in the building we’re reminded of our fraud by a wall of warm congratulatory smiles and the occasional conspiratory wink. I signed for some drinks at lunchtime with his surname and could practically hear the forces of bad karma stamping on any future hopes of my ever actually getting married. Continue reading Two weddings and a fake honeymoon

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This is probably my favourite place in the world:

It’s the corner of my parents’ garden that they don’t mow and come Spring transforms into a David Bellamy wet dream of flora and fauna, with two knotty apple trees that cast it in a comely dappled shade when the sun comes out. It’s heaven. And I bet you never thought my description of heaven would include the words ‘David Bellamy wet dream’. The hammock is the only useful thing my Sister brought from the peak of her Gap Year tragedy and is very comfortable (unlike the itchy Peru trousers she was wearing when she got off the plane, which made her look like a hippy masquerading as a clown). Continue reading Hammocks, Bluebells and Dog Photography

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You can't look this nice playing it, this woman must be cheating

Matt my virtual personal trainer was none too pleased when I switched him on yesterday.

‘Hey. I haven’t seen you in a while’ he said and gave me his low-eyebrow pissed off look.

He has two other looks in his arsenal:

1) classic underwhelmed look (eyebrows at neutral)

2) pleased look (eyebrows high).

In the slim lexicon of Playstation emotion, the eyebrows are the windows to the soul. If you decided to go out with a man from a video game you’d spend the entire time staring at his eyebrows trying to work out what he was thinking: ‘Don’t lie to me Claude Speed, I know you’re angry: I can see it in your eyebrows’ and he would probably just say nothing and look back at you, like this:

I explained to Matt that I’d been busy and hadn’t had time to do his exercise routine, but he wasn’t listening – he never listens. If I’m honest, he’s a bit of an arse.

‘You’re not going to see results unless you follow my programme’

In my absence the stony-hearted bastard has set my grade to E on the score chart. Thanks to the evening when I managed to claw my way up to a D in a blaze of sweaty triumph, my accumulation of scores now spell FEDEEE when turned horizontally. And since the grading system remains shrouded in mystery, E could stand for anything really: EXCEPTIONAL WORK;  EXTRAORDINARY EFFORT; EXCELLENT PHYSICAL IMPRESSION OF A DEAD PERSON (most likely).

Last night Matt gave me the high energy ball swipe task to complete. You appear in the middle of the TV screen as blue balls begin falling down either side, which you have to smash away before they disappear. These are mixed in with red balls that you’re not meant to touch, so you have to duck and dive around the red in an effort to reach the blue, puffing and honking like an elephant seal with the effort.

‘Never mind, we all have our bad days’ said Matt afterwards, as I lay on the floor in a state of catatonic exhaustion ‘I’ll give you a… high energy… ball swipe…’ I panted back at him.

Ha. Wonder where his eyebrows would go if I did that.

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Some fairly intense Sunday night blues are at play this end; had you walked into my living room at any given moment this evening you’d have found me staring dead-eyed at Kerry Katona: The Next Chapter with a bowl of soggy Special K balanced on one knee. Continue reading Lucy’s Hen

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To celebrate Adina’s 25th we threw a 90s-themed party on Saturday night.

Never shy when it comes to a theme, our friends provided a liberal spread of gelled hair, waistcoats, Gina G, polished macarena routines, Lilt, melody pops, platform trainers, half a Spice Girls tribute band, and – the jewel in the crown – a Jack Ryder poster stuck above the sofa, casting his approving, be-curtained gaze across the living room. Continue reading Saturday Night I Feel the Air is Getting Hot

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Back from Le Ski, where I took the little Dell with grand plans to provide you with a snow-by-snow account of my week, but there was no wireless so he wasn’t much more than an interactive crisp stand.

This was a holiday booked last year on the optimistic assumption that I’d have a permanent job by now and shed loads of cash. It wasn’t and I don’t and I don’t. Skiing is murderously expensive, even if you share a mountain squat with a Canadian called Raven and whittle your own equipment from a length of birch. (One year in Meribel – another bargain skiing holiday – I ordered a long island ice tea in a fit of decadence. The barmaid filled a very slim plastic glass with ice to the top, poured cocktail into the remaining centimetre of space before, without a shred of emotion, asking me for 17 Euros. I ran away.) Continue reading Le Ski

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Before a lesson yesterday, one of Stacey’s year 9 pupils took her to one side:

‘I can’t sit at that desk anymore Miss’

‘Why not?’

‘I got a really good reason’

‘What is it?’

‘Sorry. I can’t tell you miss’

Her friend decided to do the honours: ‘It’s because Miss, whenever you walk past that desk you brush her with your bum’

The first pupil nodded gravely.

‘So essentially’ said Stacey, recounting the incident to us later ‘my arse has got so big, my class are now having to rearrange themselves around it’ Continue reading Exercise.

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