Walk on by ...

Grrrr ... never good to start with a grrr but I will end with a hurrah!! Have been motivated through various means, people & “life wheels” (yes, yes I know) to get off my butt & start making changes to the things I want to change in my life. Spent the morning at the optician & have another key health check lined up. But amusing as it was (eyebrow raising more than belly laugh), if I’m honest, the WeightWatchers recipes episode got to me. I AM overweight these days, and by quite a lot. But as I am rubbish at diets, I need to do the ‘move more’ (obviously along with some ‘eat less’) However I have been in the wars lately & frankly unable to move more. Post the March stress fracture fiasco, my attempts to fix things did not go well. My brush with a ‘Gait Specialist’ was not a good one. Aside from the fact that every time I went for my hideously expensive (BUPA – phew!) appointment (and I was each time very much ON TIME) she would keep me waiting for at least 25 if not 30 minutes and I just got cross & so lost the will. To both listen to her & also use the hideously uncomfortable and expensive (think a pair of Emma Hope loafers ...) orthotic things I got given. So I have been half heartedly stuffing them into boots & walking for 45 mins & coming home in crippled agony as my hip was being pushed out of joint. Not surprisingly I have pretty much given up with them. But I really need to get out and move a lot more – and as I don’t want to either bugger my back OR break my foot again, I need a workable solution. So today I went to our local running shop “Run to Live” (big plug) and told my sorry story to an incredibly kind, patient & intelligent woman who helped me big time. She did all the things – and more - the gait person had charged me over £200 for, for FREE. And also gave me some brilliant common sense advice. She watched me walk with shoes, without shoes. With trainers on their own (amazingly comfortable) and with trainers with orthotic things in. Amazingly uncomfortable but her view was they did make me walk better. Hey ho. And she sat me down & told me – you are NOT as fit as you were 3 years ago. You have to go down 300 notches and start small & slow!! Like just walk to the post-box in your new trainers with hideous things in, i.e. walk for 5 mins. But do it every day till it feels OK. Then increase and ... yeah yeah I know. Fitness for dummies - hurrah!

Ooh baby baby!

Well well. What a year this is proving to be already. If I was a knitter I would be busy unravelling balls of lemon & cream wool as I have just had news reach me of a SIXTH (yes – 6!) brand new person planning to make an entrance in 2011, the year of the Yin Metal Rabbit, and to turn my friends (their new parents!) lives upside down! However as I am not really a knitter, but have recently taken delivery of a brand new, self threading (oh yes no more poking about like Mr Magoo), 22 stitch embroidery capable sewing machine, I will be scouring the shops for cashmere blankets to customise! If I’ve got my times / dates right, the first baby to arrive will be the Vegas baby so that blankie will obviously need a sequinned showgirl / Elvis theme; the next (I think) will be born to a very successful, strong & fashionable woman so maybe Jimmy Choos? Or a Birkin Bag? The other four are right now somewhat less defined but I’m sure I will be able to find a theme. The only annoying thing about all this joyful news however is that hubby is getting all soppy – no, no god forbid he doesn’t want a baby, he wants a puppy ... specifically an American Beagle ... Woof what? says the KC ...

Welcome to 2011!

Hope this is the year dreams come true for everyone. The great debate in our house over the holidays has been is this merely a New Year or a whole brand new decade? I thought 2010 heralded the new decade but contrary views abound. Anyway whatever we want to call it, it’s new & shiny & holds vast potential. The plans we have for the wreck - sorry house - are really coming together (but why is it that every time we fix one thing, another thing breaks? Fix windows, get water dripping through light socket that kind of thing) and I have checked my yearly horoscope and all is good apparently - even my Chinese prediction is positive. As a Wood Dragon I will fare well in the year of the Metal Rabbit (which doesn't begin until 3rd February) as long as I take care around knives & cars (thank goodness I discovered that as normally I would practice knife throwing whilst driving at 90mph; maybe this year I won't...) Naturally I have my ongoing resolution of “eat less, move more” (kind of A-level obvious) but a conversation with my best friend gave me further food for thought. She said she had decided to ditch the resolution this year & instead had identified 3 key 'watchwords' for her life in 2011. The words are ‘Cherish, Create & Explore’ which I thought was a wonderful idea & naturally I began pondering what mine would be. So after exhausting chats with the KC as she stalked Robins from the comfort of an inside window ledge (hey it’s cold!) here they are – ‘Nurture, Challenge & Trust’. Nurturing myself, those around me plus my house & my garden on every level; challenging myself intellectually & physically (just to be clear, not combative challenging of others!) and trusting the process more, letting go a little (control freak? Moi?!) trusting others & trusting life to unfold as it should. What would yours be?

Merry Christmas ...

.. And a happy New Year. Wishing all the best to you & yours over the festive period & a happy, healthy peaceful & prosperous 2011. Oh and a wish that in 2011 we find a way to deal with all this snow! Snowed in for 2nd time in 3 weeks .....
PS cute kitten a stock photo – as to be expected, the KC refused point blank to dress up! Bah Humbug

How do we know when we're old?

I have a very glamorous, very gorgeous & in my eyes eternally youthful friend who splits her time between LA & London. She is a proper artist (as in exists on the proceeds from her art) hangs out with the likes of Oprah (yes THE Oprah) gets invited to all the cool parties & yet who mailed me today with the attached photo (from her LA "office" - yeah I could hate her too if only she wasn't so lovely!) claiming it proved she was now old. How did it prove she was old? She was wearing purple – and a hat! For the uninitiated I now have to reproduce Jenny Joseph’s genius poem in full.

When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple
with a red hat that doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
and satin candles, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I am tired
and gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
and run my stick along the public railings
and make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
and pick the flowers in other people's gardens
and learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
and eat three pounds of sausages at a go
or only bread and pickles for a week
and hoard pens and pencils and beer nuts and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
and pay our rent and not swear in the street
and set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

I have just glanced down at my keep warm gear today – which comprises pale purple t-shirt, purple cardi & multi coloured purple scarf. And if I am honest I have grown quite fat in my domestic bliss ... my father actually gave me a stack of Weight Watchers recipe cards recently. Discreet huh? And I spend most of my income on good red wine – that's quite close to pension & brandy n'est ce pas? Maybe I just hadn’t noticed I was old ...

Winter Wonderland?

Oh dear, any Canadians or Northern Scandawegian types reading this will be howling with laughter by the end. It has snowed in Blighty, actually quite heavily – it dumped best part of a foot on us - and so all of life as we know it has stopped. Airports are shut, cars can’t go anywhere as there are no snow ploughs & the grit stops working if it goes below -5, the trains can’t run as the points are frozen and so we are stuck! For me it’s no big as I commute from upstairs to downstairs but for others it has been a horror. Have had the joy of the hubby at home since Wednesday which has been wonderful, but the fact he can’t travel 17 miles is shocking! And the KC really not sure what to make of it all (the super eagle eyed will spot her staring straight at a Robin if you look closely at the photo) She has had a couple of go’s outside but is really not sure; she slipped badly at about 6am yesterday as she tried to jump over the snow to get back inside & missed the catflap, instead crashing headfirst into the doorframe which meant she went haring back into the deep (up to her shoulders!) snow & hid under the Leylandi meowing (complaining!) loudly. Hubby had to don wellies & get a torch & get on his hands & knees to persuade her it was safe to come back in before she woke the whole street with her unbelievable wailing! We have had a moment of amazement though. Knowing the weather would be iffy (not apocalyptic as it turned out to be) I went online & ordered a heap of groceries from Ocado. And I have to take my hat off to their delivery boys – no-one was going anywhere Weds night, hubby just about got home in 1 piece, trudging through the snow for 30 mins from the station as I really couldn’t get the 4x4 full on winter equipped Volvo out as the road had iced into a skating rink, yet the legendary Ocado boys Aaron & James who had started at 6am that day then got stuck in a snowdrift for 4 hours persevered with their deliveries for 18 hours & ended up walking our groceries to us through the knee deep snow at 9pm that night!!! Way beyond the call of duty! We did at least make them a cuppa as we were their last delivery. The Dunkirk spirit lives.I have sent notes to their bosses & even mailed Chris Evans for an on air thank you. Again – thank you boys, we have red wine & the KC has her Felix!!

WHAT colour is that doggie in the window??

I fear I may be about to launch into what could be misconstrued as a xenophobic rant and I am VERY aware that as someone who hand feeds her cat fresh prawns, opens the door for her if she doesn’t want to use her cat-flap and pays cat-sitters to check on her if I’m gone for more than 6 hours at a time I may not be the most sane of people when it comes to spoiling pets either. But hey at least I don’t dye her luminous colours or dress her in plastic baseball boots, a Burberry coat and a cute pork pie hat ... the photos accompanying this piece (if you can see them properly) are real. If we could’ve got the poor burgundy pooch (no idea what breed he was other than completely hyper) to stand still for more than 2 seconds I may have worked it out. Yes OK I accept that different attitudes towards animals exist in China (the poor old Daisy Duck who was sat on a basket in the wet market outside the office was a different duck each day..) but really. We saw a bright pink poodle, the pictured poor little Pomeranian with the orange ears & lime green tail, and the pictured burgundy terrier (I think) all within the space of a day. The grooming parlours look like human nail bars – all neon lights & people in masks spraying poor Fido ludicrous colours that will no doubt cause (someone) cancer... but beyond this these tiny dogs were carried everywhere in baby carriers! It was clear that their owners adored them (one lady carrying a tiny Chihuahua in a Louis Vuitton coat - yes the dog - checked with the bar owner she could bring the dog in with her before she comitted to sitting down!) but they didn’t treat them like dogs at all. On our last day I pointed out to hubby what I thought was a cute baby in a white rabbit suit (you know bunny ears & little tail) who told me to look again - & with shock I realised it was a little dog! The most gobsmacking sight however had to be the terrified Chihuahua strapped under the stomach of a big golden retriever in a customised Baby Bjorn. If we hadn't been in the middle of crossing the road I would've taken a picture. I am not making this up. I wish I WAS joking... Cats on first glance appeared to get off slightly better but in reality it was worse. It was either the feral life (cat-walking precariously across rooftops, free but not safe) or an ostensibly safer but cramped life in a shop window. Teeny tiny kittens, big cats, small cats, all with their backs turned to the street to avoid the ever present banging on the windows. It was only the strong arm & realistic stance of hubby that stopped me emptying my bank account to bring all the cats home with me. The yes the KC is spoiled & indulged but she has freedom & is kept safe & is treated with respect - as a cat!

Fab-U-Lous!

Sorry to borrow from Craig Revell-Horwood but I think he sums up my feelings perfectly. Jet fresh back from Shanghai & ‘fab-u-lous’ seems so apt. In fact it was worth missing Strictly in Blackpool for!! Work all good but play even better. Having not been there since 1995, as I expected, the old place has changed! Gone were the vast empty spaces & fields going in from the airport full of soldiers practising manoeuvres and in their place were high rises, lanes of motorways & Gucci & Mont Blanc shops. It put me in mind of Hong Kong in the early 90’s – so much energy & potential. However the overriding first hit of capitalism is very good at helping you forget it’s a communist state. It's hard sometimes to remember this is a country that has just jailed a man for daring to try & bring to justice the big corporation that was responsible for the death of his small child & that has put the wife of the jailed Nobel peace prize winner Liu Xiaobo under house arrest for no apparent reason. However as I was not there to try & bring down communism but to help some newly hatched capitalists ply ther trade more effectively I won't dwell on the bad stuff. I will tell of the good stuff we encountered. Firstly restaurants – I cannot believe how well we ate! Unbelievably fabulous food that didn’t break the bank. We had Chinese, we had Indonesian we had Malaysian (sometimes all at the same time!) we had Japanese and I even had crabsticks on a pizza - this culinary delight was at the behest of my trainees - they wanted chicken wings & seafood pizza so who was I to argue! The restaurants were also amazingly stylish although some were far too cool for school. We ended up in one place that was eye wateringly cheap (just over £10 for 2 huge bowls of noodles, 4 sides & 4 beers) but was so painfully, consciously trendy it was comedy. All polished concrete walls & black marble bench tables with white leather stools, and the staff dressed in floor length black aprons. Quite put my very style unconscious husband off his tea! And staying in the French Concession was incredible – it felt like Vietnam; streets full of low rise stunningly beautiful 1920’s villas with art deco gates, but if you looked just behind them the 250 floor glass & chrome skyscrapers loomed. The weather was unbelievably kind – 20 degrees most days – but the layer of pollution took a while to burn off & that unique Asian smell (sewers mixed with garlic & herbs – in HK we used to say it was the smell of money) lingered at every street corner. Will stop now & attempt to construct the next instalment – I will try not to rant about how they treat their pets ..... a lime green Pomeranian anyone?

Your Majesty?

OMG. I've just twigged why the KC would rather sit out in the cold garden alone than in the warm near a human being – she won’t sit with us mere commoners as she’s a secret royalist! There I was getting ready for our trip to communist China (we leave tomorrow!) & the closet feline Royal watcher wandered in to the living room where HRH William & “Waity Katie” (although waity no more) were on TV giving an excruciating interview about their engagement & their 95 year ‘relationship’. Normally she would turn tail and run up the stairs to the sanctuary of a peasant-free bed, but tonight the sight of the heir to the throne had KC the Royalist doing the unthinkable - settling herself down on the arm of the sofa (actually sitting next to me!) to stare straight at the TV. Well well who’d’ve thought it?? Will she camp out on the day itself I wonder?? Stay tuned...!

D.I WHY????

Oh dear. I have just ruined the kitchen. Oh OK I exaggerate but only slightly. In a bid to save some cash & keep the kitchen we have for another couple of years we decided it would be smart to sand down the worktop & re-varnish it as it’s solid wood & would come up a treat! So nice handy man came & did the ostensibly hard bit of sanding etc but he only had time to put one coat of varnish on as it took forever to dry. So off he popped leaving me with a tin of varnish, some sandpaper & the words” it’s really easy – honest” ringing in my ears. But I’m sorry despite my having spent 6 evenings at a DIY course not so long ago they didn’t cover varnishing & it’s not easy. I read the tin 3 times. OK I‘ve got this I thought. I found a suitable brush and I dipped and started to “paint”. Except no-one told me varnishing isn’t like painting, you don’t work it in you simply glide a layer over...... So we now have lumps & bumps & rough bobbly bits & bits where I put way too much on that look wet even though they are dry & a series of pretty rivulets. Yup, all needs doing again...

Pretty ... vacant?

Had a ‘middle class vegetarian faux housewife’ moment yesterday. Or should I say I was an unwittingly foil to Mugatu’s “little Cletus” from Zoolander. And am duly ashamed. Had to go for yet another MRI (foot still iffy; hey ho) and hospital is close to small town with decent supermarket, so whilst lying in huge metal tube being forced to listen to Norah Jones on the hospital headphones (no that’s not my ashamed moment but it probably should be) I pondered a bit of a food shop – hubby working from home so I planned to go & get warming soup & lovely bread from said supermarket for lovely lunch a deux. Scan duly complete & off I went. Got to soup aisle & as ever I went for New Covent Garden & other such namby pamby middle class faux handmade stuff. Because you do. Then I saw a “meat” offer (hubby indulges, god forbid I do) and as ever because I can afford to, I checked provenance, is the farmer listed?, is it RSPCA approved? Is it organic? And all boxes checked popped some packs into my basket. Then on my way to the till wandered down the clothes aisle. Now normally I wouldn’t stop at supermarket clothing – puh-lease!- but in front of me were a lovely pair of dark denim jeans, very long, well cut – and only £10!! Good lord!! Into the basket they went. Got home, tipped organic, wholesome, all pigs lived a happy life stuff into fridge & said to hubby, 'blimey, look at these jeans, amazing! How do they do it so cheaply??' Hubby raised his eyebrow as only he can & said – well, where were they made? Ah good point – had not even crossed my mind. So I checked label and ..... there it was – made in Bangladesh. That’s how they were so cheap. So much for organic RSPCA approved sausages huh?