Hadrian's Wall has collapsed

Our plans to walk Hadrian's Wall have been thwarted by TOH falling off the pavement while out on a run on Wednesday and tearing the ligaments in his ankle.

He was in so much pain. I have never seen anyone in such agony before. Anyway, he is now hobbling around on crutches so obviously walking the wall is out of the question.

We hurriedly organised an alternative holiday instead - we are off to France for a road trip, although for a brief minute, we nearly had cheap flights to Cancun, in Mexico, but they had gone in the time it took to read out our credit card number.

France should be fun as we are camping along the way (wimpy Thames walkers take note!) even though the forecast is not too favourable.

Now, both Mexico and the wall are back on the 'to do' list. It's a good job I didn't spend hundreds of pounds on new walking boots, waterproofs and a new rucksack(!)

Shopping 'til I is dropping

A retail-based weekend, which pretty much knackered me out!

Saturday, TOH and I went into Covent Garden to get some more kit for Hadrian's Wall before meeting Alex and Antony-and-Caroline. It was such a beautiful day that after lunch we sat in St James's Park along with about 10,000 other Londoners and tourists.

Sunday, the final assault of Oxford St with both bridesmaids. And success! The dresses have been bought (to avoid any wedding day embarassment, ladies, please do not wear anything from this year's Monsoon which has flowers on it!). The next problem is shoes. After going into every shoe shop in Oxford St and New Oxford St, we were still shoeless.

Still, the dresses have been bought, in just three-and-a-half hours, and everyone is happy! Even TOH!

Oxford St was full of brides with their troops trying on every dress they could get their hands on. I felt like I was part of a plague of locusts, blowing across the fields of dresses and sparkly accessories, picking up bits and leaving chaos in our wake.

And all the staff in the shops were so incredibly rude. Debenhams and Dickens and Jones seemed to be staffed solely by sulky eastern Europeans.

Still the dresses have been bought, which is an enormous relief, and Kelly, Jenny and I had a lovely time being girly and gossipy over coffees and pannini.

(Tank Of Life update: One fish dead. A clown loach. Went all thin and floated on its side. Did I speak too soon?)

Dinner party

The thought of more TV hell sent me back to work where I continued to sniff, cough and sneeze but regained the will to live.

Plus, we were invited round to Penny and Patrick's for a grown up dinner party which brought back my mum's words echoing in my ears: If you're not well enough to go to school, then you're not well enough to go out.

I made a minor error, though, by driving over to Ladbrooke Grove (an hour-and-a-half sitting in the traffic) and forgetting to pay the congestion charge until after 10pm, when the price doubles to £10 instead of a fiver. The delay was because I didn't know my number plate when I rang in the afternoon, then I got pissed.

But dinner was lovley. And you can tell it was proper grown-up because we oohed and aaahed over baby pictures and were interested in their trendy Notting Hill baby accessories! Well, I was interested, not sure about TOH ...

I never thought I'd say this ...

... but thank god I have a job! I was off work yesterday suffering from a boring cold and spent the day in bed watching TV.

How much rubbish is on? I used to think I liked make over programmes (such as LLB on Changing Rooms) but a morning with the BBC made me want to slit my wrists.

Cash In The Attic, Car Booty, To Buy Or Not To Buy, Homes Under The Hammer, Trading Up - no wonder the BBC is being accused of falling apart! I ended up sticking About A Boy on the DVD player instead.

Tank of Life

Since leaving the Tank of Doom to its own devices with just two little zebra danios swimming about inside, it would appear Death's rampage among my fishes has come to an end.




So, taking a chance, I bought a heater and decided to try tropical fish instead of goldfish, as an 'expert' told me they are far easier to keep in small tanks.

And so far, success. The Tank of Life is now brimming with, well, life. The danios perked up no end once the water temperature was more to their taste and I bought two more with slightly longer floaty tails.

There are also ten cardinal tetras:



Two clown loaches:




And two dwarf gouramis:




They were introduced over the past two weeks and I will leave it a while before adding some more. But I don't think I will add any more than four more fish, or it will be like Picadilly Circus in there!

Click on the pictures for more information about the fish, if you want, like.

Three films

Forget Nine Songs (it looks like a load of old w@nk, literally!) - We did Three Films instead.

Friday - The Chorus (Les Choristers)
Charming, French, feel-god kind of movie. A post war School Of Rock but instead of privileged kids these were 'troubled' teens and orphans in a virtual Borstal. And instead of rock, they learnt to sing choir-stylee. A lovely movie.

Saturday - Hotel Rwanda
Thoughtful and brilliantly acted story of how one man managed to save the lives of just over 1,000 people as Hutus went mad in Rwanda and macheted millions of Tutsis and Hutus to death while the UN could do nothing and the rest of the world stood around picking their nose. Story focussed on the true story of the bravery of Paul Rusesabagina, who stood up and was counted when the shit hit the fan. The film spares us the graphic depictions of violence but lays on the fear and horror caused by the genocide.
Just the thing to end a day of Greenpeace campaigning in Stratford!

Sunday - Constantine
Ridiculous comic-book anti-hero fights the devil and hell, while heaven seems to have abandoned him. Utter nonsense but quite entertaining. And of course. Keanu Reeves is always nice to look at on a Sunday afternoon, after a 16-mile bike ride round the canals and streets of London Town.

Naughty blogger

The mysterious force which powers this blog thingy has been being very naughty of late and not letting me post ... maybe it is Steve clogging up the lines with a spurt of activity? (Sorry, mate, couldn't resist!)

Anyway, something for the weekend: http://frontsteps.com/creations/1001/139/index.php?t=1110560034
Make sure you turn the sound up!

All quiet on the Eastern front

Midweek roundup, which will be of no interest to anyone but myself and my future children, who might want to 'get to know' their mum through the medium on interweb diary keeping.

We cycled to the GP meeting last night - TOH did a lot better when he was in front as he was 'less panicked' by me setting the pace. But then, once he got going, I could hardly keep up, what with him being such a fit boy. And today, he announced that he has entered the London Triathlon!

So, from Sunday, when he was complaining the gears on his brand new bike were 'broken' because he didn't know how to work them, he has suddenly become a competitive cyclist! And swimmer and runner.

The only problem is, that after sending in his application, he realised that the event is on the same day as his mate's wedding. Which is a shame, because ever since we've lived on the dock, we've never been around for the triathlon!

The meeting was rather frustrating. We arrived at 7.35pm and it had already started. We were relegated to the back of the group on bar stools and couldn't hear a thing as the music was too loud. And some of the people annoyed me. I wish I could be more like my mate James, who genuinely seems to like everyone he meets. I get very annoyed by defensive people and people who think they know best .... (ha ha ha! Thank god you can't 'meet' yourself. I would probably have to kill me if I met me!)

Bridesmaids

And I thought finding a wedding dress for me was difficult!

My plan to get nice dresses from the shops has gone a bit pete tong in that there is nothing about at the moment.

Jenny and I scoured Selfridges and part of Oxford St looking at the fashions but nothing really appealed. There was one in a wedding dress shop, which might well be the ones we go for but I need to see Kelly in it too.

It's a fine balancing act finding something which I like and they will want to wear!

Happy Birthday darling

The weekend was dedicated to my darling Other Half - he was a mere 29 years old on Sunday.

So, for Friday night's treat I took him to see National Anthems at the Old Vic. To be honest, it was a deeply disappointing play, with no real themes explored and no conclusions. It taught us nothing about life and how to relate to the world. It introduced us to nothing new, no insights into different cultures. It did have a few laughs and some good lines. It's only redeeming feature was that Kevin Spacey was in it. The real Kevin Spacey, from The Usual Suspects and American Beauty. And he was magnificent.

On Saturday, TOH was supposed to go to the football but instead spent all day sleeping off a surprise migraine. It was touch and go whether or not he would be better by the evening when his friends came over for dinner. I spent all day cooking (literally) so we were going to have that meal with or without him! But fortunately the migraine subsided and he was fine. Everyone loved my veggie pie and birthday cake, even though I cooked it at the wrong temperature and it was both burnt and soggy!

Sunday morning we went for a bike ride before I nipped off to Greenwich to meet Steve, Jo, Sarah, Gail and Chris. I abandoned TOH on his birthday to meet his family because BRIDGET and SARA were back! It was very nice to catch up with them - actually the MBE meister is back for good, which is excellent news.
In the evening we went to see Kinsey. Liam Neeson is brilliant as the 'sex doctor' as is Laura Linney (his wife). There is also a superb cameo from John Lithgow as Kinsey Snr.

Snow joke!

A lovely wintery covering of snow made the dock look quite romantic this morning. Now, it has all melted and life is back to grey, grey, grey. Although inside is very homely now - we have a fantastic new floor, all our bathrooms are working again and things are less dusty than usual. Just a new bedroom carpet to lay, and we will be living in a near-ideal home again.

You have a woman's hand, my lord

The on-going beauty regime meant I had my first ever facial down at the Elemis place. It was way better than the last time - wonderful smelling fruity concoctions and massage. Unfortunately no celebrity gossip though.

Someone who clearly does have regular beauty treatments, or at the very least a manicure, has to be Prince Charles. I can't look at his fat, bloated sausage fingers on the news any more. I bet he's never done a day's work with them. He probably even pays a servant to flog his other servants ... I dread the wedding day pictures when we are treated to wall-to-wall images of his puffy digits sporting a new wedding ring. Vile.

Perfectly illustrated here:


Welcome to my anonymous poster! I am so excited that someone who I can't guess the identity of has posted on the comments bit of the blog. It made me remember that I forgot to mention the near miss while on Ryan Air! As we flew over The Channel, a second Ryan Air plane was but metres from our right-hand wing. Just as I exclaimed 'what the fffff...' we banked very sharply to the left and it became further away. It was rather scary.

There's only one Jamie Oliver

I feel I may have made a mistake buying TOH a bike. We picked it up after work, cycled six miles home in the pissing rain and dark only for him to collapse at the end, unable to breathe and pass out in bed.

Not because he is unfit - I would like to emphasis that the boy is a marathon-running exercise fanatic - but because he wasn't feeling too well since getting back from Spain, and this has obviously tipped him over the edge into proper illness.

By way of cheering him up, I would like to poke fun at Delia Smith for her comedy outburst at the football yesterday. The sight of her on TV screeching 'where are you? Where are you? Let's be having you' at Norwich supporters was too funny for words!