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A Sense of Direction 2007-03-11 15:14:00 IT was my turn to be laughed at today (my turn seems to come round remarkably quickly). I had been telling everyone about my week away from the office to do a training course. I happened to mention that I had never taken the same route twice and I had got lost at some point on my journey every day. On the way home on my last day I was so hopelessly off course that as I approached a junction I looked to see where the sun was, knowing that I lived to the west.Where was this training course? John O' Groats? Isle of Wight? Timbuctoo? No, at Exeter about 25 miles from my home in the county where I have lived practically all my life.On Friday I needed to do my weekly grocery shopping. The Dearly Beloved gave me very detailed instructions on how to get from the course venue to a Tesco. I followed his instructions to the letter .... or thought I had. I was feeling very proud of myself as I saw a sign that said "Superstore" ... and found myself in Sainsbury's car park. Needless to say, I have Read more:Sense
, Direction
Class Act 2007-02-28 20:07:00 THERE was much mocking laughter this evening when one of us sitting at my kitchen table revealed she had just bought a plain linen duvet cover for £200. £200? For that money I would have expected the bed, a couple of wardrobes, a brass bedstead and George Clooney thrown in.We decided she'd become very middle-class. You know the middle-class - they're those people with names like Tiggy and Tarquin who live in large houses with stripped pine floors that give them splinters and have Agas in the kitchen they don't know how to use.Tiggy and Tarquin sleep in bedrooms with Victorian cast iron fireplaces that haven't seen a flame since 1852, wearing pyjamas woven by Amazonian Indians from the pubic hair of Peruvian peasant women. They breakfast on wholegrain muesli drizzled with organic macrobiotic natural low-fat yak's piss and plates of guava harvested by an endangered species of colobus monkey.After breakfast they take a power walk to work, counting their carbon footprints as they go Read more:Class Act
Red Faces 2007-02-25 12:35:00 TODAY one of my friends told me about an embarrassing incident when out with her four-year-old daughter. She was in a queue at the supermarket and in front of her was a black-haired woman in leathers with tattoos on her bare arms. Her daughter, having been told off for a similar incident only hours before, said loudly: "Look, mummy, that lady's been drawing on herself with felt tips. Tell her she's naughty." My friend suddenly remembered she had to find something at the opposite end of the supermarket.This got us thinking about our most embarrassing moments.When I was a young trainee reporter I was given the very important task of telephoning a man who had grown a giant marrow. One of my first comments to him was: "I hear you've got a particularly big one." At the time I was sharing an office with three male reporters who all started laughing so much they had to leave the room.A former colleague remembers the time he was on the phone to a woman about the imminent closure of a day ca
Valentine's Day Commandments 2007-02-14 17:34:00 THIS evening my friends and I talked about Valentine
's Day and how unromantic most of our "better" halves were. So here are my 10 commandments for my "dearly beloved".1. Thou shalt worship no other woman except me, even if she is 18 with the body of an athlete and her father owns a brewery.2. Thou shalt not take my name in vain and will lie through your teeth in the pub to give the impression I am a softly-spoken goddess with the milk of human kindness running through my veins.3. Thou shalt remember it's Valentine's Day and keep it holy with a multitude of sacrifices including chocolates, flowers, champagne and expensive jewellery.4. Thou shalt honour my family and ignore the fact that half of them are barking.5. Thou shalt remember the Sabbath and take me out to Sunday lunch so that I do not have to have to do unspeakable things to you with a roast parsnip.6. Thou shalt not commit adultery unless thou desirest to spend the rest of your life talking in a high voice and wearing women Read more:Commandments
Guilty Secrets 2007-02-03 08:42:00 WHAT guilty little addictions do you have? I’m not talking about the big addictions – drugs, sex, rock and roll, 12 pints of Buckfast before breakfast – but the little ones.It was confession time this evening and we shared a few of the things that get us through the day.Mine is books. I read a review and the next thing I know I’m on the Amazon website and ordering it. Dearly Beloved shakes his head in bemusement and makes comments like: “Just what we need in this house, another book.”I have developed the expertise of an alcoholic but instead of a bottle of vodka in the bread bin, it’s A Short History of Tractors in the Ukraine. I have The Blind Assassin in my wardrobe, Anna Karenina under my pillow and A Suitable Boy under my bed.It’s a family thing. We’re forever lugging about carrier bags full of “gear” and whispering things out the sides of our mouths like, “This Bill Bryson came in last night. Grade A. Interested?”“Yeah, I’ll swap you two Minette Walte Read more:Guilty
, Secrets
I Resolve 2007-01-10 21:05:00 TONIGHT the conversation around my kitchen table turned to New Year’s resolutions.I don’t know why we bother. I know my vow to eat half a lettuce leaf and a pea every day until Keira Knightley is begging me to be her body double is doomed to failure and my friend knows the once a week visit to the gym will be once in a blue moon before the sweat has dried on her Nike vest.We decided it would be better if we made resolutions we could definitely stick to. I have therefore vowed to watch more television, read more trashy novels, neglect the garden, drink more red wine, talk embarrassingly loudly in the pub after a couple of gins and utter at least two sarcastic comments a day to the Dearly Beloved.We also thought up a few resolutions for other people:I will always check I’m wearing knickers before I go out. (Britney Spears)I will ditch the toxic substances. (Pete Doherty)I will ditch the toxic substance. (Kate Moss about Pete Doherty)We will go on a Butlin’s mini-break for our hol Read more:Resolve
Kitchen Cupboards 2006-12-23 22:06:00 IT'S the eve of Christmas Eve and my "bah humbug" attitude to the festive season is mellowing, although if I hear Johnny Mathis singing When A Child Is Born one more time I might just be forced to insert the offending CD into the offending person's orifice.Yesterday we finished work early. I was taken out to lunch, then back in the office drank a celebratory glass of champagne - all very civilised.Today my sister told me she had rearranged her kitchen cupboards so that everything was in alphabetical order. I was dumbstruck with admiration and not a little surprised; she's not usually that well organised. It's all because her son, who is a brilliant cook, will be cooking Christmas dinner. She will be acting as kitchen assistant and, if previous years are anything to go by, there will a constant stream of "can you pass me the balsamic vinegar", "do you have celery salt?" "I need some five spice" and so on and so on. The alphabetic arrangement is "so that I don't spend half the day w Read more:Kitchen
Teenage Trauma 2006-12-16 08:22:00 YESTERDAY I battled through the crowds in my lunch hour to try to do some Christmas shopping. It was a bit of a cop-out as I bought gift tokens for the teenage members of my family. But what can you buy a teenager that won’t necessitate a sharp dig in their ribs and a hissed and brittle "say thank you to Auntie” from their mum?Not that any of the teenagers in my family resemble Harry Enfield’s monstrous creations Kevin and Perry. They are all perfectly pleasant kids who treat this aunt with bemused tolerance... but their tastes change faster than Johnny Vegas downs a pint.It seems like only yesterday I was buying building blocks and outfits for Barbie. Now I don't know from one day to the next what's "coo-el" and what isn't. I try to engage them in conversation about a band that yesterday was "totally wicked". Today, any mention of the band's name and eyes roll back into heads as if you had suggested they might quite like to listen to your T'Pau Greatest Hits CD.Last month N
The Man Manager 2006-12-14 22:30:00 TONIGHT we talked about software programmes. I was asked: "If you had the ability to invent any software programme, what would it do?"I suggested that The Man Manager would be a surefire best-seller. Download it onto his iPOD and he, as if by magic:learns that beer is not one of the major food groups;learns how to put up shelves that don't immediately fall down;picks up damp towels in the bathroom instead of leaving them on the floor in a smelly mess;washes up without moaning for the previous two hours;knows the correct response to "Do I look fat in this?" i.e. "You could wear a sack and still look absolutely beautiful.";has the ability to drink fizzy drinks without belching;develops an aversion to busty young blondes and ability to pass one without muttering under his breath, "You don't get many of those to a pound.";develops a passion for dumpy, middle-aged women;has the ability to forget every football statistic that currently crams what passes for a brain and instead remembers ju
Mutilated Monkey Wrench 2006-12-13 21:55:00 My friend’s son Tom has joined a band. They’re called Mutilated
Monkey Wrench – or something like that.Mutilated Monkey Wrench has so far had two gigs. One was in the back room of a pub which was attended by four band members, a couple of girlfriends, three classmates and two women who had mistaken the room for the ladies’ loo. The women hung about for a while, thinking the line of jiggling youngsters watching the stage was the queue for the lavatories. They left in a hurry when their own jiggling became unbearable. The other gig was in a village hall on Bonfire Night. They played to the accompaniment of loud fireworks and caused much bemusement to elderly village ladies taking refuge from the cold to eat their hotdogs indoors.The band is heavy metal with a nod towards death metal. Does this mean anything to you? It is, as far as I can make out from the monosyllabic grunts that pass for conversation in my friend’s house, a nihilistic look at life, with violence, death and dar
I Shall Wear Purple 2006-12-12 22:12:00 AROUND my kitchen table today we carried on the "the day that I knew I'd lost it" conversation (see yesterday's entry).I can't remember the day I lost it, but I remember the day I realised I was getting old. I walked into a shoe shop and rejected a pair of the most beautiful high-heeled strappy sandals in favour of a comfy pair of shoes.At least, I consoled myself, I hadn't bought slip-ons on the grounds that they were easier to put on than strappy sandals.Age has also precluded me from buying other desirable objects of apparel. The thought of wearing a thong makes my cheeks red - and not the ones on my face.The ubiquitous shrug is another garment I have caressed longingly in the shops. I even slipped one on but decided a little mohair top that stopped short of my nipples was not a good look. I am aware, before you remind me, that a shrug isn't supposed to stop short of your nipples, but look, I'm no longer a perky young thing so my nipples aren't quite so high-riding as they on Read more:Purple
Don't Call Me Madam 2006-12-11 20:12:00 AROUND my kitchen table this evening the conversation turned to "women of a certain age". My 35-year-old friend believes that today was the day she officially lost it. "It" being that certain something that young women have - that perky, flirty something that gets you what you want. Manipulative, of course, and sexist, naturally, but very useful nevertheless.After oversleeping she'd had a mad scramble to get out of the house and get to work on time and had forgotten to put on her seat-belt. She was flagged down by a policeman who she swears wasn't a day over 14. She batted her eyelashes, trying to look cute and apologised in a girly, breathy voice .Instead of rising to the occasion like Sir Lancelot coming to the aid of a damsel in distress, he looked as uncomfortable as if he were being propositioned by his maiden aunt. The final nail in the coffin was when he produced a fixed penalty ticket and called her madam. Not miss or honey or love or sweetheart but, horror of horrors, MADAM.
Take One Duster... 2006-12-10 14:24:00 YESTERDAY I had the day off. There were no events or family gatherings in my diary – things that usually fill my Saturdays. Dearly beloved is working (he's a cabinet-maker who makes kitchens) and everyone is wanting their kitchens finished before Christmas (so inconsiderate! Get a takeaway). So I decided that today I would have a blitz on the house. This is how it went:1. Make a list. Include on list everything I intend to do today, from wash the kitchen floor to sort through pile of magazines in the spare bedroom.2. Read list while drinking a cup of coffee and eating a chocolate biscuit.3. Pile dishes into dishwasher, pile clothes into washing-machine.4. Feel slightly virtuous. Can at least now see my kitchen worktops.5. Hoover sitting-room. Keep one eye on lovely, soft settee. Intend brief sit-down to see if it’s as comfortable as I remember. It is.6. Spot DVD of A Hard Day’s Night which Craig from work has lent me. Wake up an hour later. Switch off DVD.7. Drink another cup of Read more:Duster
A Girl Can Dream 2006-12-09 19:14:00 I HAVE a vision of my ideal kitchen; a beautiful country kitchen. It is in a country house where I can see fields from the window. It has an Aga in which I cook country fare like casseroles and bread, filling the kitchen with mouth-watering aromas. It has light oak cupboards and granite counter tops. There are slate tiles on the floor. There is a large kitchen table where family and friends congregate to eat, read, talk and put the world to rights. There's a dog and a cat curled up keeping warm by the Aga.Back on earth ... the reality is a smallish, untidy kitchen which occasionally has tin foil trays from ready meals in the bin and bread in the cupboard going blue around the edges.I have just taken a look around and what do I see? The kitchen table has my laptop, a paper shredder, my iPOD in its docking system, a pile of tablemats, a plate bearing a few toast crumbs and an empty cup. The vacuum cleaner is standing accusingly beside me, shouting ‘use me, use me’, but I’m ignorin Read more:Dream
Iodine and Germolene 2007-03-16 16:15:00 TODAY my friend could only stay for a quick cup of coffee because one of her children was off school with a sickness bug.Off school? The only reason my parents would let me miss school was if I had limbs amputated or was in quarantine with the Black Death.This hardy pair had three remedies – Germolene, iodine and my father’s patent medicine. Germolene was for minor injuries. All cuts, grazes, rashes, burns and bites were cured by the liberal application of the smelly, pink antiseptic gloop.Iodine
was for more serious injuries; for example, when bones were visible. My father, a farmer and horse trainer, had the unshakeable belief that if it didn’t kill the horses, then it wouldn’t kill us. If iodine stopped a horse’s hoof from going septic, then it would certainly sort out a kid’s cut. Believe me, you do not know pain until you have had neat iodine poured over an open wound.For colds, coughs, flu and diseases of the respiratory system, my father’s patent medicine was whisk
Try this 2007-03-18 12:23:00 I was a praying mantis in a previous life, apparently. What were you?You Were a Praying MantisYou have the still power of a legendary warrior.You are able to manipulate time - or at least, the perception of it.What Animal Were You In a Past Life?Click here to email me
Cat Scan 2007-03-24 09:07:00 Oh God, the bloody cat's at it now. He's written the blog below:SHE'S at it again, trying to lose weight. All the exercise tapes and DVDs have been hauled out of the cupboard and a year's accumulation of dust has been wiped from their covers. Then it's on with the sweat pants and vest.By this time, what with all the dusting and dressing, she's ready for a nice cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit, kidding herself that because she eats it standing up, it doesn't have any calories.Then it's back to the exercise.The first one that goes on is a Jane Fonda one from the 1980s. Twenty-plus years on and she just doesn't get it, IT AIN'T WORKING, SWEETHEART. After five minutes - nowhere near 'going for the burn' - she has to sit down and have another chocolate biscuit."Well, I've earned it after all that exercise," she says to me as I stare at her with one eye open from the comfort of the sofa. Don't get at me, woman. I'm not the one who's been stuffing themselves with Cadbury's
Sorry 2007-03-29 19:45:00 APOLOGIES are in the news. With the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the British slave trade, Tony Blair is being urged to say sorry for Britain's involvement in the business.Appalling though the slave trade was, I just don't see the point.Isn't an apology for something you didn't personally do and had no control over, meaningless? Every civilised person is sorry that the slave trade ever happened and probably even more sorry that in certain parts of the world it's still going on.In any case, my 19th Century ancestors never rose any higher than the dizzying social heights of peasant. They were more likely to have been treated like slaves than acted like slave masters.I don't suppose that sitting in their Devon hovel they gave much thought to current events."I say, Agnes, what do you think about Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations?""I think, Ezekiel, its attack on the doctrines of mercantilism are commendable although I have doubts about th
A Night Out With The Girls 2007-04-01 09:27:00 I WAS out last night with a few of the girls.Big mistake. Big, big mistake.I'm partial to the occasional whisky or red wine with my steak and chips but on the whole I'm not a big drinker.However, I am sometimes - sorry to make you men jealous - led astray by wild women.This is how it goes.We enter a pub and there's a mad scramble to find a table to sit around. We have to sit down. There's not one of us wearing a pair of shoes you can stand up in for longer than it takes a puddle of blood to seep out of a blister. If, Pompeii-wise, we are preserved in a layer of lava, historians a few centuries down the line will be wondering about the strange social custom that's placed bare-footed women sitting around tables with, underneath, various shoes with vertiginous heels.We start off sober and restrained, discussing work and family. But after a couple of drinks, we fix our gimlet eyes on the other drinkers. We wonder if the couple in the corner are married or having an affair. Definitely Read more:Night
, Girls
Shop 'Til You Drop 2007-04-08 15:48:00 I DID my weekly grocery shop on Thursday. That's Maundy Thursday, the day before Good Friday, when most shops close. The shops were all open again on Saturday, of course. So why were we shoppers all rushing around like headless chickens as if rationing was just around the corner?I was in one of those superstores where by the time you've walked from entrance to check-out you've expended the same amount of energy as if you had just completed an Ironman Triathlon. You'd think I'd be fitter.You'd think.Knowing that I couldn't buy an emergency tin of baked beans on Friday brought me out in a cold sweat. I felt a sudden urge to bulk buy and piled the trolley with bargain packs of fruit and veg. I stared at it, realising that if the dearly beloved and I started eating on Good Friday and didn't stop until Christmas Eve we would still have 3lbs of bananas and half a dozen packets of French bistro-style salads left over (French bistro, apparently, meaning it's got baby spinach and raw s
Tattoos 2007-04-21 10:08:00 WHEN I was a child the only people who had tattoos were serial killers and Hell's Angels. So when one of my friends today was in a right old state because her daughter had come home from university with a tattoo, I sympathised.However, the younger women around my table were very laid back and sounded envious of what sounds like a ring of dried black snot around the girl's upper arm."That's cool," said one."Cool?" I said. "What are you, 15?"Let's face it, tattoos last longer than most relationships so if you have "I love Wilhelmina-Chardonnay" tattooed on your arm, it's going to be very difficult a couple of years down the line to change it to "I love Bo".A friend of a friend of a friend thought it hilarious to have "Bill's playground" tattooed along her bikini line. Trouble was, Bill upped and took his Action Man to another woman's playground.I once worked with a rather naïve woman who fell in love with the idea of a tattoo. "I'd love a flower," she twittered. "In cerise. My f Read more:Tattoos
Procrastination 2007-04-29 10:15:00 PROCRASTINATION is a probably a crap title for a blog posting if you want lots of visitors to your site. I found this out while surfing other people's blogs. www.allthingswomanly.blogspot.com/ had tried an experiment by calling her postings things like "pussies" and "tits" and had had many more visitors than usual. She did, to be fair, include a picture of cats and two beautiful blue tits, which I'm sure was a powerful comfort to watery-eyed men using Google search to try to find a pneumatic lass with whom to share their oh so lonely nights. But I'm going to leave "procrastination" as my title because, well, wittering on about blue tits stops me from having to write about what I really intended to write about which was…. what was it? ….. procrastination.I am an arch procrastinator. Faced with a kitchen which will require an industrial-strength vacuum and a couple gallons of bleach to clear up the detritus of last night's supper, I turn on my computer and start looking at other Read more:Procrastination
Broadband Problems 2007-05-12 09:19:00 IT seems ironic that after my last posting, called "procrastination" , I then take two weeks to write again.I have mitigating circumstances.My ISP phoned to say I could have a free broadband upgrade. Great. An email arrived inviting me to "click here" to activate. I "click here" to activate. Then the next time I try to connect to the internet. Nothing.I can, if I so desire, phone a helpline but as I notice it costs 50p a minute - 50-BLOODY-PEE A BLOODY MINUTE - for something I'm 99 per cent sure is their fault, I decide against the option, which in hindsight was probably a bad idea, it subsequently costing me a complete head of torn-out hair, sky-high blood pressure, teeth gnashed to the gums and acute apoplexy.I dig out the trailing wires that connect my computer to the phone line - these wires being the reason I went wireless in the first place - and try to connect again. I can't.I revert to an old paid-for account with an 0845 number. These costs are so high that I get a call from
The Chaos Theory Behind Springcleaning 2007-05-13 16:19:00 EVERY once in a while the Marigolds and the feather duster come out here at Chez Disarray. And yes, I am talking about spring-cleaning, not some weird sexual practice for which certain men pay good money in Soho. The picture, by the way, is not of me, although she does bear a remarkably close resemblance to me .... apart from her age, height, weight, hair, legs, eyes, mouth and figure. I am, unfortunately, caught by the CHAOS theory (as mentioned by http://piginthekitchen.blogspot.com in a previous comment) - that's Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome because your house is too messy.When the CHAOS theory really starts to take over, I begin my assault on the mess.It always starts the same way - an excess of energetic zeal that sees me empty every single cupboard in the kitchen onto the floor. Then I go through every item, one by one. I find a good half dozen bottles with half an inch of congealed sauce in the bottom, then there's the cereal packets with their handful of damp flakes, the Read more:Chaos
, Theory
Gardening for Beginners 2007-05-26 03:12:00 WHAT ever is the opposite of greenfingers, I have. I only have to walk past a houseplant for it to shrivel up and die in front of my eyes.It's not a family thing. My brothers and sisters are all keen and expert gardeners. But I can get a cutting, water it with tears, dip it in rooting powder, keep it in a polythene bag in the airing cupboard, pray over it, cast magic spells, and wait for it to start shooting. And wait. And wait. And wait.My mother on the other hand can find a dry twig in the road, stick it in her garden and the next day, honestly, it will be six foot high and covered in flowers.As my birthday comes round and various people ask me if there is anything that I want, I sometimes ask for a plant of some kind. They look at me as if they may as well stick the tenner straight into the recycling bin and so cut out the middle man.My eldest sister dishes out plants that she has propagated. They come complete with Latin name tag and strict instructions on how to care for them. Mi
Playing Tag 2007-06-02 02:06:00 I HAVE been tagged. Twice. I'm such a blog ignoramus that I had to do a Google search to find out what this meant. Wikipedia tells me it's a bit like a game of tag. Someone writes a list (e.g. Five Things You Love About Posh and Becks) and then tags some more people to write their list. I'm honoured and am in the process of thinking about what to write. I'll do it soon. This tag business got me thinking about childhood games.I lived on a farm in the middle of nowhere as a child and went to the village school where our pleasures were simple - putting teachers in wicker men and burning them alive, running around forests with stags' antlers on our head and sacrificing the runt of the litter (he was called Mervyn) to the goddess of the moon. The usual innocent pagan rituals.One game was called "freeze" where everyone would leap and dance about until the "it" child yelled: "Freeze!", like some American cop, at the top of its little lungs and everyone would have to freeze in the posit
Taking My Time 2007-06-09 09:45:00 I'M not that fussed about getting old.Really I'm not.Really.I don't live in some image-obsessed city where a wrinkle has to be sand-blasted to oblivion lest anyone thinks you are over 30 but in the country where we are very much more laid back about looks. I don't worry that where I live designer clothes mean Barbour and Hunters. In my village the height of fashion is having floral-decorated wellies.In any case, I have many positive role models of older women. My older sister (oh, much, much older) runs triathlons in her 60s. My mother does the The Times large cryptic crossword every week and can still lob a dishcloth at the side of your head at 20 paces if you upset her. Eldest sister is a brilliant painter.My Auntie Marjorie was 90-something when she died. The last conversation I had with her I suggested she might like to use a zimmer frame as she was getting wobbly on her feet. Her answer? "Oh no, dear, I'd look like an old lady!"But the thing I really hate about getting old is Read more:Taking
On A BlogHop 2007-06-12 01:32:00 IT'S easy to get an inflated sense of your own popularity with this blog business. There I was basking in the (usually) kind and complimentary comments that people leave on my postings when my eye was caught by a little link on my sidebar: rate me on BlogHop.com, it said.When I first started posting I read an article about getting visitors to your site so I joined a few blog communities - and promptly forgot about them. Time to have a look at how Around My Kitchen Table was doing. Each blog on BlogHop has a "popularity rating" so, with great anticipation, I thought I'd check mine out. Had fans queued up to vote for my humble little offering? Had they left glowing comments, remarked on my brilliance or my apposite way with words? Had they promised to link me to their own blogs or even suggested I visit theirs? Had they buggery.What was my popularity rating? 0%. Yes 0%. I know I'm not popular in the same way as the Sugababes are popular with pubescent boys or a bottle of Johnnie Walke
Big Brother is Watching You 2007-06-23 02:18:00 I'M not a Luddite. Technology holds no fears for me. I am an expert. In fact, I have one of those musicy thingies - you know, find song on interweb, press "buy me" button, connect musicy thingy to computer, put song on it, stick buttons in ears and dance around house while listening to Beatles' White Album, feel a prat when dearly beloved comes home and finds you belting out Happiness Is A Warm Gun to the cat ….. An iPOD, yes that's it, an iPOD.Admittedly, I thought Bluetooth was something you got from overdosing on blueberries but, on the whole, I try to go with the technology flow.But what's all this CCTV business? I had a quick dash around the shops the other day and felt like a contestant on a city-wide Big Brother
programme.I want to be able to wander around without the terrible feeling that there's a man in a peaked cap somewhere with his feet up on a console pointing at a screen and saying, "Euuuhhh, look at 'er, she's scratching her ass!" to some friend he's charged a Read more:Watching
, Big Brother
Smoking Ban 2007-06-30 01:32:00 I HAVE this theory about death.If you're too fat, you'll die of some heart-related problem; if you're too thin, you'll die of some immune-system or blood-related problem; if you're just right, you'll be murdered because someone will be round to smash your smug little face in. If you're a smoker, well, it doesn't bear thinking about, diseases are queueing up to grab your butt.However, Nanny State (she's the one with permanently pursed lips who will never let you out to play) is once again taking a demolition ball to smash an ashtray. From tomorrow smoking is banned in all public places in England. As a non-smoker I have no particular problem with that. It will be good to have a drink in a pub without going home with your clothes smelling like a chain-smoking gorilla's armpit. Smokers will be that sorry little bunch outside the pub huddled under an open-sided shelter in the pouring rain. It can't have sides, like a bus shelter (more of which later) or a shed, you see, because Read more:Smoking
, Smoking Ban
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