Making Excuses
2007-08-18 01:40:00
PERSONALLY, I would never tell a fib to get out of something I didn't want to go to .........My friend, let's just call her X, has been invited to a party at a neighbour's house to celebrate their silver wedding. She doesn't want to go because she knows it'll be all polite sherry-drinking, making conversation with polite people, and eating polite little squares of rich fruit cake with icing and silver balls. She doesn't really do polite. She's more of a get-pissed-and-show-'em-your-new-knickers kind of a girl. Despite that, she's also a very sweet person who doesn't want to hurt anyone's feelings.So the invitation sits on her mantelpiece in all its silver embossed glory and she says she gets depressed every time she looks at it because she feels she has to accept.The rest of us more cyncial bunch sitting around my kitchen table chorused: "Then don't accept!" X says she has to because they're nice people and she has no good reason to refuse. For goodness sake, what's the m
Read more: Excuses
Grumpy Old Woman
2007-08-25 09:52:00
I'M getting old. I don't mean in that 'oh dear, I've got a faint laughter line' kind of old but in that 'everything was better when I was a child' grumpy old woman kind of old.I can no longer watch television without becoming incandescent with rage about something or other - not just the big things like terrorism, crime, the National Health Service and education, but little things which ought to pass me by, leaving my serenity untouched. These 'little things' usually involve some health and safety nonsense, or some food advice from the Government, or some official over-reaction or under-reaction to an issue.It was never like it in my day. There was so much commonsense sloshing about that you didn't need a law to tell you that poking yourself in the eyes with a red-hot poker was going to make you blind. Where has all that commonsense gone? I'll tell you where it's gone - it's been mopped up into legislation and Government papers, smeared around quangos and committees so man
The Battle Of Broken Stool
2007-09-22 02:53:00
I'M having a battle with the dearly beloved. We are at war. We glare at each other over the cornflakes in the morning, trying to remain civil for the sake of the cat, and talk in clipped tones about who gets what.
We’re not talking big things like the house, the furniture or the car. We’re talking rubbish.
Yes, I’ve hired a skip (think that’s a dumpster in American) and it stands outside my
Read more: Battle
, Broken
, Stool
2007-09-06 14:23:00
WHAT is it with surveys? Ninety-nine per cent of them tell you something you already knew or something so obscure that you could care less. This week the ones that have been dropping into my inbox at work have been mind-blowingly inconsequential.First, there was the astonishing news that rock stars, on average, die younger than, say, chartered surveyors. You don't say. Today I had one that told
Use-By Dates
2007-04-10 00:51:00
MY friends have been reading my blog about shopping and the conversation turned to "use-by" dates on food.
We have very different attitudes to that little date-stamp. One of us religiously throws out anything that has passed its shelf life while another uses it as a guide.
Personally I look on those dates as a challenge. A packet of custard powder that orders me to use it by Jan 7, 1982? Pah!
Have A Drink On Me
2007-10-20 04:00:00
I WAS shocked to learn that the middle-classes are at risk from alcohol abuse. Although I was born most definitely working class, I suppose I have, through my work, become middle-class so I fear they are talking to me.
(Yes, sweetheart, another glass of shiraz would be lovely).
It’s a ridiculous notion. Drink
too much? Me?
(Don’t throw away that Irish coffee, I haven’t licked out the glass
Fitting My Genes
2007-11-03 02:19:00
AS someone who is somewhat vertically challenged (5ft 2 and a half - don't forget the half - in my stockinged feet), I was at first upset to read that in a 100,000 years humankind could be divided into two sub-species – a tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent and creative upper class and an underclass of dimwitted, shortarses.
100,000 years time? I’m already there. Always knew I was a
Read more: Genes
Vanity Mirror
2007-12-02 02:14:00
ANOTHER of those daft surveys came out on Wednesday. It seems that some women admit to looking in a mirror up to 71 times a day.
71 times a day? That's about once every 15 minutes during their waking hours- a little bit excessive, surely, even for a narcissistic 20-something whoseone aim in life is to be the next Paris Hilton.
I was trying to work out how many times a day I personally look in
Read more: Vanity
Cafe Culture
2008-03-04 02:54:43
I’VE always been somewhat cynical, even as a child. I can’t, for example, ever remember believing in Father Christmas. I knew all about a big kindly man carrying a sack - but that was my dad with a bag of horse feed over his shoulder.
So when we were told, back in 2005, that relaxing the licensing laws would turn us all into continental clones, embracing cafe culture by nibbling on
Cooking On The Curriculum
2008-02-25 14:11:15
SO domestic science (good old D.S.) is to return to schools. My head tells me this is a good thing but my heart starts to thud in memory of my own dire days trying to do battle with flour and butter in a vain bid to produce the perfect Victoria sponge.
It didn’t help that before being allowed within sniffing distance of an oven set on Gas Mark 5 we had to make an apron. Now sewing - as the
Read more: Curriculum
A Question of Age
2008-03-12 14:25:47
THERE was a young man in the supermarket queue in front of me buying some beer. He seemed a decent enough lad but he looked young. The shop assistant was obviously suspicious that he might be buying booze to alleviate the pain of doing his history homework so she asked him for some ID.
He looked offended and said, “But I’m 22!”
Oh how I felt for that young man as he rifled through his wallet
Read more: Question
Sex Education
2008-03-23 08:39:10
Photo: www.freefoto.com
I BLAME my complete inability to chat nonchalantly about sex and, um, you know, women’s things, on the fact that at school I was never taught how to put a condom on a cucumber.
My “adult” education began when I was just about to go to boarding school. My mother thrust a book in my hand called “You’re A Young Lady Now” which had been produced by Kotex. Things went
Read more: Education
Not Floating On The Air
2008-04-06 06:44:35
OH dear, I'm getting more and more like a mad old woman every day. And not just any mad old woman. A mad old woman with Tourette's.
I began the week with a foul-mouthed tirade against a young van-driving oik with one elbow out the window and a gormless expression on his face driving two inches from my back bumper as I was on my way to work.
Luckily, sealed in my metal tube with my back to him,
Read more: Floating
Extreme Sports and Adrenaline Rush Deprivation
2008-05-03 14:59:42
EVERYWHERE you look these days there’s a story about Extreme
Sports
. A young man on breakfast TV this week was talking about taking part in sports like mountain BMX and snowboarding.
He seemed a nice enough lad but the dearly beloved scoffed mercilessly at his earnest interview.
“Extreme Sports? Didn’t these kids ever have a childhood?” he sneered.
Back in the days when it used to snow in the
Read more: Adrenaline
Gifts and Gardening
2008-06-29 02:19:42
Picture: www.freefoto.com
THINGS I have been given in the last fortnight: a home-made Victoria sponge, rump steak, broad beans, spring onions, lettuces, radishes, two plates of fish pie, four venison burgers, a selection of sea-caught fish and a delicious home-made catalan-style sauce.
I am very grateful for all this, even though there is a risk that when I die they will have to winch me out
Read more: Gifts
How To Cook A Cottage Pie
2008-09-07 10:57:16
I HAVE been on a stay-at-home holiday this week while the better half has been at work. These kinds of holidays are when I try to convince myself what a good housewife I could have been if only paid employment did not intervene to whisk me off to an office five days a week.
I rather like this notion of being a domestic goddess, feather duster in hand while a beef casserole gently simmers in the
Mad As a Bag of Spanners
2008-09-15 14:25:17
LEFT to my own devices without the steadying hand of my much better half I fear I would rapidly turn into one of those mad women who live on their own in a tumbledown cottage on the edge of the village, surrounded by books and animals.
I can see it now. I will be the one about whom mothers warn their children. "Don't hit your brother or Mad Woman will come and get you."
"Mcdonalds?
Cruising on the High Seas
2008-09-27 03:25:59
I'M not sure I'm cut out for the high life. My better half was enthusiastically reading out the details of a cruise advertised in the Sunday papers.
It went half way round the world and lasted over three months. The best cabins cost £33,000 ($61,000) EACH. You could get an inside cabin, a snip at about £8,000 per person.
I refrained from raining on his parade, currently taking place in la-la
Read more: Cruising
|
Recommend Site To A Friend
