Beach bodies

There’s nothing like covertly studying other people’s inadequate bodies through your sun glasses when on the beach to make you feel good about yourself, is there?

As you may have gathered from my posts about dieting and fitness, I have a few body issues at the moment. But last week, studying others on the beach in the early season sunshine, I did wonder what I was worrying about.

Firstly, there are the people who are just plain fat. They hang over the outside of their swim suit or over the top of their trunks with abandon, clearly not caring how unpleasant their pasty rolls of fat look to anyone else. In high summer it is almost understandable that they want to be as cool (as in temperature) as possible and so have stripped off, but in April? They’re certainly not cool in any other sense. And the men that are overweight with their untended flabby moobs are just as bad as the women.

Then there are those who are just moderately fat but insist on wearing a swimming costume that is at least two sizes two small. They squeeze themselves into it regardless of the fact that it must be pinching and pulling in lots of tender and very personal places as well as cutting into their thighs and hips. I can’t think of anything more uncomfortable than something which is so tight that when you take it off, it must leave its mark on you for hours.

Then there are those that insist on taking their bikini top off on the beach however shapeless, overweight or disproportionate they may be. Mostly, I have to say, these tend to be German or Scandi women but there are a fair few Brits do it too. Despite the fact that topless bathing is illegal in Greece, they seem to uncover with regularity and flaunt their misshapen, oversized, pasty white and covered with blue veins boobs for all to see. Personally, I think there is nothing less attractive than topless bathing and I wish the beach attendants would stop them doing it, but I think that is a forlorn hope and so I will just have to wear darker glasses to avoid being blinded by the white glare from dangly flesh that is firmly covered the rest of the year.

On the opposite end of the size scale, you see stick thin women who have dieted themselves into extinction and look equally unpleasant. Their bones and ribs are sticking out, their skin looks lack lustre and they look constantly miserable. These women have serious body issues rather than just being deluded about what looks good, and need to get help.

Of course, even more annoying than the lardies is the occasional lithe and toned young woman who is tanned to perfection and wearing a skimpy bikini in a flattering shape and colour. Normally she is accompanied by an impossible good looking young man or, on occasion, by a gross but clearly incredibly rich sugar daddy who is parading her as some sort of trophy. How dare she show off her perfect body in a public place and make the rest of us feel inadequate – bitch! If he’s that rich, then sit round your own private pool. And if he isn’t, cover up!

Snoring - a heinous accusation !

Apparently I snore.

Naturally I dispute this heinous allegation and in fact could level exactly the same one at the person who is accusing me, namely The Hubby (well who else would it be?), who snorts away best part of the night flat on his back and incredibly resistant to all but the most vicious pokes in his ribs to make him turn over.

I certainly never used to snore, and in fact gave only the most ladylike of snorts on the odd occasion when I had a bad cold or sinusitis, or possibly when I had consumed a glass of wine or two too many. But not on any other occasion and certainly not in the high decibel range of which I am being accused.

I do sleep incredibly badly, which is why I am always tired. And that has got worse as I have gained weight and got older. I read somewhere that a bad sleeping pattern was one of the most debilitating symptoms of menopause and one of the most common causes of depression. So watch out! And it makes you fatter, because you are too tired to do anything constructive about eating healthily and instead eat comfort food.

The Hubby is also, of course, reluctant to accept that he snores fit to wake the dead, proclaiming with total confidence that he has been lying awake for most of the night listening to me. Utter nonsense and one of these days I am going to record him on my mobile phone and play it back to him in the morning (although on second thoughts he might do the same thing to me, which could be a bit of a backward step for my argument if he is telling the truth, so maybe not).

There’s nothing else for it, I will have to buy some earplugs and get a large enough supply for The Hubby to have some too. You can buy an incredible array of them on e-Bay, as I discovered last night when searching through for something, anything, which will allow me to sleep uninterrupted as best I am able. Foam, rubber, perspex and in all sorts of shapes and colours (yes, this is earplugs, not anything else more seedy or for use in any other orifice, which would be too much information even for this blog!). I am just about to purchase a massive pack of yellow foam ones for a fiver which market themselves as being ‘the best available’. We’ll see.

Snoring is a very odd thing isn’t it? Why would nature design our throats with such an obvious flaw? There is all sorts of science around snoring, including nose strips, machines which mean you have to wear a mask all night and have cold air artificially blown down your throat to keep the soft palate open and old wives remedies involving sleeping in a pyjama jacket with clothes pegs or tennis balls sown into the back seam. They all sound incredibly uncomfortable.

I don’t think the problem is that bad, so earplugs it will have to be and we will see if it makes any difference. I can’t tell you how wearing it is to be permanently tired because you wake up every two or three hours, struggle to get back to sleep and never get an uninterrupted eight hours. It turns you into a proper witch and yes, you can tell the difference between that and my normal sweet natured state, all you rude people out there!

I’ll give them a try for a few weeks and then let you all know how I get on – although you might be able to tell for yourselves !!

Greek Easter; it's dynamite!

We have just got back from Greece, where we went for Greek Orthodox Easter. Not because we practice the Greek Orthodox faith, but because we always like to have a warm break in late March or April and Easter is a big spectacle out there, so worth seeing. Easter in Crete is quite something.

We go to our apartment in Agios Nikolaos and just do nothing except chill and soak up the atmosphere for a week. The Easter Saturday evening gathering around their beautiful picturesque lake is like nothing else I have ever experienced; firstly we go out to eat then find ourselves a seat in one of the lakeside cafes. The whole population of the town turns out, all carrying lit candles and then at about five to midnight the procession comes across from the church carrying the icon of the Virgin Mary on a beautiful flower adorned bier. There is a lot of very serious chanting and waving of incense, then on the stroke of midnight (or a little sooner if they can’t wait) and totally drowning out the priest’s incantations an enormous number of fireworks are set off, lighting up the sky for about ten to fifteen minutes with a panorama of colour and sparkle.

Alongside the fireworks, firecrackers and bangers there are also usually, hidden away somewhere because it’s illegal to do it, a few sticks of dynamite being thrown. The first year I experienced this, some local lads threw several sticks of dynamite into the lake and the whole ground shook (the next morning the lake was full of dead fish). This was, if course, somewhat unwise as the lake was originally formed by a volcanic fault line and they still get minor earthquakes there from time to time, as well as the cliff face being covered in fissures and cracks and looking rather fragile. This year the lake was ringed with police, there with the express purpose of stopping the dynamiting, and the culprits were obviously further away. But the deep ‘boom’ is unmistakeable and I think they were being thrown into the harbour, where they would do less damage.

The weather in Crete in April is usually marvellous (last year when I went with friends being a notable exception) and this year didn’t disappoint. The sun shone most days and the temperature was in the mid twenties, roundly beating the south east of England which managed a measly eight degrees. Once or twice we had very strong breezes, which is fairly typical, but overall it was lovely and we managed a few long walks, which is it far too hot to do in summer.

In addition to the sunshine, the early part of the year out there had been exceptionally wet and the landscape was far greener than I have seen it for many years. The tops of the mountains were still covered with a healthy coating of snow which, as my neighbour on the plane pointed out, looked enough to ski on.

I now have another eight weeks before I can go back for two weeks holiday in June, and I am counting the days. By then it will be hotter, less windy and probably all the picturesque snow will have gone. It will also be more crowded and the locals will have less time to talk. But I would still rather be there than here. Roll on 10^th June!

Why do we celebrate getting beaten (or sunk!)?

I don't get all the fuss about the Titanic that there has been for the past few weeks. Of course I know why; the bloody thing sank 100 years ago on April 14th 1912, but I don't understand all the fuss. After all the hype and the money, it was a monumental failure when it came up against the best that Mother Nature had to offer which had been totally predictable.

You could argue that the Titanic was unlucky, I suppose. That a massive iceberg should be exactly where they didn't want it to be and that it pierced a vulnerable point on the hull could be construed as bad luck. But surely the point was that there shouldn't have been a vulnerable point and the ship's navigation instruments should have spotted it.

What is it about the British psyche which leads us to celebrate failures? They are littered throughout our history and dressed up afterwards as triumphs. Bannockburn, Flodden, Evesham, Paschendaele, Dunkirk... and the Titanic. All dreadful failures and all with massive losses of life. And all celebrated - why?

You don't catch the Americans celebrating Pearl Harbour, or the Japanese celebrating Hiroshima, or the Russians celebrating Chernobyl. Bet your life the Brits would!

Perhaps it's just an excuse for a party and our natural optimism. Perhaps just a refusal to accept defeat. I don't know, but it's very odd.

Personally it's a relief to be able to switch on the TV and not be bombarded with programmes about the damn thing, factual or fiction. But next it'll be the olympics and we'll be celebrating getting thrashed at various sports.

I don't get it. Really, I don't!

Another update on the fitness regime

I thought it was about time that I gave you an update on my fitness regime. Not that there is a great deal to say because, unfortunately, it has stalled somewhat.

You all know that in the early days I did really well, doing exercise, eating less and more healthily and losing 10lb in the process.  And that's about it. Nothing else has happened and, as it always does, life has overtaken me.

I haven't put the weight back on, mind you, but I certainly haven't lost any more. The busyness of work, trying to run the house and now starting rehearsals again means that I just don't have time to think about my food, which is what you really have to focus on if you want to seriously lose weight. 

Having just been on holiday, and feeling rather pleased that I have managed to squeeze back into a pair of jeans I left in Crete last autumn, I am however conscious that in a swimsuit I still look rather like a lemon on matchsticks (or a weeble, if you prefer) and must lose some more. So the promised supermodel status is still some way off.

The Hubby also feels like a weeble, so we are climbing back on the wagon as I write and, with the exception of going out to dinner, all booze, sugar and the majority of fat and carbs are banned. We have eight weeks before going to Greece again, and will have lost more weight by then and done some more exercise.

I have the added incentive that I am incredibly skint, and need to cut down on the shopping bill. Buying less of the luxuries will have the benefit not only of making me trimmer but also of making me richer. And I do think it gets easier to lose weight when the weather is warmer and you simply don't feel like eating loads of the stodgy comfort food you eat in the winter.

I will need to discipline myself to keep out of the kitchen, since I find baking an incredibly relaxing and fulfilling activity. But it's chronically bad for the waistline, so I mustn't do it. Instead I'll have to do some more writing and perhaps focus on that self help book I intend to e-publish.

I wonder if I ought to write a chapter on dieting?

Not just animals.

People who say animals are just that - animals - don't know what they are talking about. Every animal I have ever had or looked after for someone else has had one characteristic which they share with humans. They have personality.

I now have three cats. Regular bloggers will remember that one of my moggies, the lovely Phantom, had to be put to sleep a while back as she was very sick. So now I have three - all moggies, all officially domestic shorthairs, and all different.

Smudge is now boss cat. She is the oldest, the biggest and the most aggressive. She uses her size and sheer bulk to intimidate the others and take the lion's share of the food (partly why she is such a porker) and the best cushion. She is a Daddy's girl, and will only sit on The Hubby's lap unless he is out and she is desperate. She is incredibly greedy and will move like greased lightening when she hears a tin of tuna being opened or the cat treat bag being rustled. She is more trouble than all the others put together, and always has been. On the plus side, she can be very affectionate and defends her territory with vigour. A few months ago next door's Dalmation, the most incredibly stupid dog I have ever come across, got into our garden and Smudge was out there, squaring up to it with a tail like a loo brush and lashing out with front paws, claws distended, until it retreated with its tail between its legs.

Daisy is the beauty queen of the bunch, and boy, does she know it! Although officially a shorthair, she has long tortoiseshell hair and the most beautiful face of any cat I have ever known. As a kitten, she was the sort of animal that appears in photos on the front of chocolate boxes. She is incredibly affectionate and the Mummy's girl of the bunch, not deigning to sit on anyone else even if I am absent. But beauty, as they say, is only skin deep and the lovely Daisy has some dirty habits. If the weather is inclement, she will pee up anything left incautiously at floor level in the back lobby (a sort of outside storage area) rather than go outside and she is a nasty bully, always wanting what one of the others has and persisting until she triumphs. Daisy suffers from the double vices of avarice and vanity!

Hermione is the cutie. The smallest, she is totally black and was so named as a witch's cat after Hermione Grainger in the Harry Potter films. Ill as a kitten, we thought she wasn't growing properly and although eventually she did, she is tiny compared to the other two. She is never greedy, never pushy and the most affectionate of the bunch with no hidden motive or agenda. She is adorable and sweet with huge green eyes which see into your soul.

These three animals, and also poor Phantom who was like a twitchy maiden aunt, are individuals and it is a mistake to not recognise them as such. They are members of my family with all the quirks and foibles that our children also have. That's why we love them, and they add a dimension to our lives which makes us richer and more rounded people. To dismiss them as 'just animals' is a mistake we should never make.

It's pointless....

I love Pointless !!

For the uninitiated, Pointless is shown on BBC One at 5.15 each weekday, preceding the news. The idea is that you have to provide an obscure answer to a question which as few others as possible knew. So the lower the points you get, the better. If you get an answer wrong, you get the maximum 100 points for that question.

It is absolutely staggering how little some people know. Last week, I heard a woman name Boris Johnson as a member of the Labour cabinet under Gordon Brown. But that's the same as any quiz show and of course it's much easier answering questions at home in my arm chair than it is doing it in the studio. But generally speaking, people are pretty thick.

One of the things I really love about Pointless! is the laconic style of Alexander Armstrong as the host. On most occasions, he couldn't look less interested in what is going on, and his almost completely but not quite hidden amusement when they give an obviously ridiculous or stupid answer is wonderful to behold. Equally great is Alexander's sidekick Richard, the clever man with the computer, who seems to know and be erudite about everything.

It's always very pleasing to be able to pitch my knowledge against the numbskulls who compete on these programmes and I have been known to score several pointless answers. Trouble is there is almost always a question at some stage about sport and that is where I fall down. I know nothing (that's zero, zilch, diddly squat and bugger all for the avoidance of doubt) about sport. Which is where you need a man, not a comment I find I make very often.

Judging by the standard of some of the contestants, I might as well enter my cats as a team; they'd do equally as well as some of the thickos I watch on a weekly basis. They'd only be able to answer questions about cat food, chundering up furballs onto the carpet, the best way to fur up the chairs and killing mice, but that gives them a greater breadth of knowledge than most contestants.

I've often thought about entering for one of these shows, but I just know I wouldn't have time. And I just know that for all my sneering, I probably would do just as badly as many of the people I am being sniffy about. But maybe one day I'll have to have a try, just to see if it is as easy as I think it ought to be!

The menopause - oh, God!

I am definitely experiencing symptoms of the menopause. Feeling hot and sweaty with no reason, feeling a bit scratchy (as in bad mood, not itchy) with no provocation and an irregular sleep pattern which makes me permanently tired. My blood pressure has shot up and my skin has reverted to its teenage tendency to break out in zits for the slightest reason at the most inconvenient time. But by and large, nothing too dreadful and so far, The Hubby is getting off lightly.

I say getting off lightly because I have not yet felt the urge to take a large kitchen knife to him or thrown anything across the room at him, which, if you believe the trashy women's magazines, is what we are supposed to do when we hit 50 and the menopause. And of course it's my opinion, I don't know if he would agree and I haven't asked him. I might not get the right answer!

To be honest, the worst of it all is the poor sleeping. I can go to bed really tired, feel my eyes drooping and put the light out, the lie there for hours not able to nod off. The longer you lie there the more active the brain seems to become and it becomes more and more impossible to sleep as you start thinking of more and more things. More than once, I have given up in disgust and got up at 3am to make a cuppa. Let me tell you the cats look pretty startled to see me at that hour! And after a couple of days of it, I start to feel really ill. As someone who needs their eight hours to function properly, trying to survive on three is a nightmare (no pun intended!).

I know that lots of women suffer much more than me, and really if this is the worst of it I shouldn't complain. For the moment it's more of an inconvenience than anything else and after a couple of nights of sleep problems I know I will have a night of solid out-for-the-count sleep as I will be so exhausted. But it is debilitating while it happens and affects the rest of your life in terms of concentration and application. I perform less well at work, and can't concentrate at rehearsals or at home.

Do men have a menopause? I'm not sure. It seems pretty unfair if they don't. After all, we women do all the conception, birthing, child rearing and so on, and Mother Nature has dumped us with all the hormonal imbalances which affect us in later life too. All men seem to get is a beer gut (or, as The Hubby would call them, love handles!).

I am determined not to resort to HRT unless there is a compelling reason to do so. It seems to me that women who take it end up on tablets for years and that it can cause as many problems as it solves. I will just sit tight and live through it hoping it doesn't get any worse. And in the meantime, put a combination lock onto the knife drawer just in case and get The Hubby to change to combination! 

Summer's over

That's it. Summer's over!

It is slightly ironic that the moment the hosepipe ban started in south east England, it started raining and hasn't stopped. Having been walking round in summer tee shirts and cotton trousers, I have now gone back to leggings, sweaters, long socks and boots. I even considered laying a fire again the other day as it was so chilly.

The weather is up the swanny everywhere, of course. In the north of England, after a week of temperatures in the twenties, last week they had twelve inches of snow. In Crete, where our apartment is, it has been unseasonably warm for the time of year with temperatures in the thirties.

The weather men tell us that we need it to rain all summer to make up for the lack of rainfall over the last two winters, and the reservoirs are indeed a pitiful sight. But despite the lack of rain it seems to have been a long, cold, grey winter and we all need some respite. I do hope that the sunshine we have had over the past week isn't the lot for the year; we have lots of time at home throughout July and August and it would be nice to use the barbeque and garden a little more than we have been able to for the last two years.

I am not growing any plants this year, bar a few for flowering pots on the patio which can be watered with a can. I wouldn't put it past any of my chavvy neighbours to dob me in to the water board for using my hosepipe to get some sort of 'supergrass' award, even though most of them seem petrified of getting involved with any sort of authority and certainly not the police. But I'm sure none of them would be averse to making a quick, anonymous quid if the chance presented itself.

I'm sure that the time will come when we all get water meters, and we will have to radically change our ways when it does. Until then, I am going to keep hoping for sun as it makes me feel better and the world look brighter. And if we run out of water, I'll drink wine; it's the least I can do!

Where did Easter go?

It was a lovely long weekend, but I can't help wondering where it went.

The time since last Thursday evening, when we all breathed a sigh of relief that we didn't have to go to the office for four days and settled in for Easter, seems to have flown by. I can't even think what we've done really. We had a short family do on Saturday evening for our kids, then went to see the in laws Sunday afternoon, but apart from that we've just bodged around the house and done a few odd jobs at a reasonable pace. On Monday we went out and bought my birthday pressie (a 160 GB ipod classic - yey!) and then had lunch at Pizza Express. Very nice, but now we are all back to work again.

I have had two really crappy days in the office this week before going off to Crete. Several meetings, including three quite difficult appraisals for staff that are deluded about their capabilities and attitude. While I am away they will be sticking pins into their little plasticine dolls of me and thinking nothing but evil thoughts about me. Such are the trials of being a boss and having several staff!

I have left some blogs to publish in my absence, but you will have to go onto the blogsite or be signed up to read them as they will not auto publish to Facebook. And while I'm away, I will be people watching and observing for lots more blog material!

Keep reading, and I'll be back soon.

What a carry on!

I am just watching, for the umpteenth time, the wonderful ' Carry on up the jungle'. I've been a fan of the Carry On movies ever since I can remember, and this is one of my favourites, not least because it has the legendary Frankie Howerd in it.

It is a measure of the quality of the bank holiday telly that COUTJ is the highlight, but never mind. It is, and it's on right now. It's just got to the bit in the natives' camp where Frankie is masquerading as a magician called Tinkle of the Miraculous Doings, a wonderful title for a magician if ever I heard one.

The other night I sat and watched, again for the umpteenth time, 'Carry On Cleo'. I almost know every word, and was counting down to the moment of the most famous line in any Carry On, Kenneth Williams' "Infamy, infamy, they've all got it in for me" which I chanted joyously along with Kenneth when the moment was right.

The Hubby thinks I am an extremely sad woman for my almost childlike enjoyment of these movies, which are a sort of celluloid equivalent of the old fashioned saucy seaside postcard (I always laughed at them too). Bawdy jokes, ridiculous situations and unlikely heroes combine with brilliant writing which is too often underestimated and sneered at. But it's wonderful; the jokes are funny, the situations absurd and the knowledge of the human psyche and the characteristics that fundamentally make us such a pompous and preening race are all there. Sid James, with his lived in face and distinctive, filthy laugh, Kenneth Williams with his upper class superiority, Kenneth Connor, Barbara Windsor, Joan Sims. Hattie Jacques, Charles Hawtrey and Jim Dale as well as countless other supporting actors, Bernard Breslaw probably chief amongst them, will live in cinema history as some of the most brilliant comic actors of the 20th century. Forget about the last few entries in the series of films (Jack, Emmanuelle and one or two other later offerings which mainly lacked the talent of most of the original cast), this was a series of movies which will remain classics forever.

Probably my absolute favourite is Carry On Cowboy (although Carry On Up The Khyber runs it close with Kenneth Williams as the Khasi of Kalibar). All the stalwarts are there plus Angela Douglas as Annie Oakley, out to avenge her father. Every cowboy joke under the sun is thrown in and the star turn is Jon Pertwee as a deaf and incompetent sheriff. And the sight of Sid James as the Rumpo Kid, the villainous cowboy, dressed in drag as a saloon belle is something to behold.

I have almost all the Carry Ons on DVD at home, which I watch when I'm ill or feeling low because they will always make me laugh. I use them as inspiration for writing my panto scripts, or simply to fill an idle evening when there's nothing on the telly. I can watch them again and again without getting bored (although I can't say the same for my family, who groan and go "Not again" when I put one on!).

Now excuse me, I must get on because after this I am watching a compilation programme called "The Best of Benny Hill". Quality!

Easter chocolate!

It’s the Easter break, and for many of us it’s a lovely four day weekend. Of course if you work in retail you only get one day off – Easter Sunday – due to the rampant commercialism that seems to exist in the UK these days, and if you work in the emergency services then you work your usual shifts so it makes no difference. But for those office workers amongst us, it makes a nice change.

Easter always seems to be a bit of a non event as regards how celebrations go, even though it is the biggest religious festival of the year. Yes, despite the lack of tinsel it is bigger than Christmas, because it is about affirmation of faith and rebirth. On continental Europe it is even bigger, with massive religious services taking place in the open air and lots of chanting and candles.

Every country has its own way of celebrating Easter. In the UK we celebrate with chocolate eggs and the Easter Bunny, and sit down to scoff roast lamb for lunch. In Greece, where we will also be present for Greek Orthodox Easter a couple of weeks later, they have their main Easter meal after the midnight church service on Saturday night and the traditional dish is a sort of lemony chicken soup. On the Sunday itself, they put whole lamb or goat carcasses on the spit and have a barbeque, picking lemons straight from the trees to squeeze all over the barbequing meat.

Where did chocolate eggs come from as a celebration? It seems somewhat bizarre, although as an opportunity to make money it has been grabbed with eager hands by the confectionery industry. Eggs feature in many countries’ celebrations (the Greeks hard boil them, dye them red and embed them into bread – weird) but why chocolate?

It’s not even nice chocolate unless you pay a fortune for Green & Blacks. Even a Cadbury’s Dairy Milk egg seems rather thin and insipid when compared to the original bar. Thornton’s is nauseatingly sweet, and the cheap stuff they sell in Poundland is only fit for the dog.

I’d much rather have nice boxes of choccies – preferably dark chocolate and with fruit cream fillings. My particular favourite is orange creams and I am very partial to a liqueur cherry! Oh, and old fashioned violet and rose creams with the little crystalline petal on top – yummy! But they are very hard to find. The shops are awash with toffee centres, pralines, nuts and marzipan, but try finding a decent set of fruit creams –almost impossible unless you go to those mega expensive shops where they let you chose your own chocolates to go in the box.

Of course we shouldn’t eat it at all, it’s very bad for us and very expensive. But we do – our children have so much chocolate at Easter (even though they are mostly now adults) that they store it all up for weeks afterwards nibbling away, then they get bored with it and far too much gets thrown away.

But woe betide us if we don’t provide it –we’d never hear the end of it.

Why do I kill houseplants?

I am the kiss of death to houseplants.

I try incredibly hard to keep them looking beautiful and green, but somehow or other I always seem to get it wrong. i have no idea whether I overwater them, underwater them, place them in a draught, deprive them of light, give them too much sun or whatever, somehow or other they all seem to die, usually slowly and, from the look of them, fairly painfully.

I am writing this looking at a lovely lily plant I was given for Mother's Day. When it arrived in the house, it was a luscious dark green with glossy leaves and tight buds full of promise to be pure white flowers filled with fragrance. Now, after almost three weeks of my tender care, the leaves are going yellow and falling off from the bottom of the stem and the flowers, whilst they have come out and smell nice, are curling and looking brown at the edges. I have done my best with it,  keeping it moist but not sitting in water, in good light but not brilliant sunlight and out of a draught. But still it is dying.

It's all the more surprising that I can't do this because I was brought up in a family that had a massive garden and practised horticulture with a considerable degree of success. My Dad was a groundsman for a big school whose gardens he kept looking immaculate, and he also gardened and grew vegetables as a hobby, winning prize after prize at the local horticulture society's annual show. My Mum could garden too, and after my Dad's death kept on his allotment from which she shared vast quantities of fresh veg each summer along with some beautiful flowers.

Although I can do OK in the garden and the greenhouse (although last year my tomatoes were a dismal failure and something ate all my potatoes while they were still in the ground), I simply cannot keep plants in the house, so clearly my parents' talents have not rubbed off on me. On my dining room table at the moment I am nurturing a variety of baby plants for the summer; some fushias and geraniums for pots on the patio and several chilli plants. They are all doing OK with the aid of Miracle Gro, but the begonias I bought at the same time look decidedly sick. They are flopping over, one or two have rotted at the base and they aren't growing. What do I do wrong?

I never buy myself plants any more, because I know it is a waste of money. I prefer fresh flowers anyway, and those I never seem to have trouble with. I have some chrysanthemums in a vase in the lounge which have also been here two weeks and with just a little fresh water and a new sachet of flower food they still look lovely.

I will continue caring for my remaining healthy baby plants in my little table top nursery, because flowers and home grown food both look and taste much nicer than shop bought. They aren't cheaper, don't make the mistake of thinking that, but there is a certain satisfaction from saying "I grew that!". I hope I get to say it this year - fingers crossed!

Doppelgangers

I have a terrible tendency to look at my colleagues or people in the street and then identify them with famous characters or celebrities.

We have a very senior lawyer at work that looks just like the child catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, one of the scariest characters in a children’s film I have ever seen. He has the pointy noise, mad smile, long face and pale pallor which make him a dead ringer for it. One of our very senior Directors looks just like a character from Thunderbirds with a high shiny forehead, thick rimmed glasses and a tendency to hold his hands in front of him and bob them up and down when trying to make a point. One of my colleagues looks just like Mr Bean, and the other day was twirling a pen between his fingers when it pinged off into mid air and he did an impression of a cat washing its face trying to catch it. Someone who is in the back row of the chorus in a current production at my local theatre has her hair in a very shiny bob with a thick fringe and looks just like Wendolene from Wallace and Grommit. Either that or it’s a syrup (syrup of figs / wigs – gettit?)!

It’s very cruel to do this I know. And I have no idea whether other people do the same to me or anyone else. But it is an infinite source of entertainment.

Perhaps I have a brain which works in a slightly parallel dimension and I can see this where others can’t. Maybe I just have more imagination. When I have mentioned the likenesses to colleagues at first they are surprised, then amused and afterwards say they cannot think about that person without making the same comparison.

Something else I do is look at people and try to guess their professions. It is endlessly entertaining to sit on the tube (if you can get a seat) and work your way along the row of people sitting opposite and try to guess a) their name and b) their occupation. Many of them give their occupation away through their attire or their accoutrements (brief case, art folder, weird headscarf artfully tied in scruffy hair etc) but for some it’s really difficult and can take me almost an entire journey thinking through various options and selecting that which seems most likely or amuses me the most.

Guessing names is much harder. It used to be that if you were over 60 you were much more likely to be called Douglas, Frederick, Richard or something similarly old fashioned if you were a chap and something like Queenie, Emily, Violet or Freda if you were a woman. But all that has gone out of the window now, and many of the old fashioned names are coming back. There was a child at my daughter’s school called Stanley, and there is a Violet at my grand daughter’s nursery. Fancy names, courtesy of celebrities and fanciful parents, are also very likely and I have come across children called Summer and, poor kid, Seraphina.

I did for a time toy with naming my daughters Myvanwy (which, I discovered, is Welsh for Fanny) and Angharad, but in the end settled for Catherine Louisa and Suzanna Nancy (she hates the Nancy!). Nice, solid, old fashioned but not frumpy English names. So I indulge my imagination by naming my fellow tube passengers with the most outrageous name I think suits them.

It’s good fun – you ought to try it!

Changing frequency! Less is more.....

Today I have been blogging for four months. It seems less – there are so many topics to write about and so much to say.  

But as from today, "The view on the street" will be moving to every two or three days. That’s not because I have run out of things to say – far from it – but the sheer time required to sit down and write something to be published is not available to me. Between work, looking after a home and family, and having hobbies I don’t often have much time left, and most evenings I am exhausted.  

I’d love to be able to blog for a living or even just to write, although if I depended upon it for my living I suspect it would lose its sheen after a few weeks and become a treadmill.  But it has to be better than commuting to a thankless job which I don’t enjoy every day.

Writing a blog is remarkably therapeutic. It allows you to vent your fury at events and circumstances that normally you would have to smile and put up with. It allows you to say what you think about a massive variety of topics and for me, the more controversial the better. I would really like more followers on my blog and I would like people to say what they think too, it doesn’t matter if they disagree. I have had some interesting responses on a couple of topics, but not really anything confrontational.

Now that could be because people aren’t interested, but I know from the stats that an average of 20 people a day read the thing, so presumably they have clicked on the links because they wanted to see what I had to say. Some topics have had lots more clicks, and some of those are from the USA, Canada and Australia (I do know one person in Canada, but not in those other places).

I can understand why newspaper columnists and bloggers only write once or twice a week. It is incredibly time consuming and trying to do it in a rush profoundly unsatisfying. I am considering, in a few months time, putting all my blogs together and sending them to a publisher to see if they would be interested – surely someone is interested in the sort of drivel I write? If there are people out there who will watch TOWIE, there must be people who will read my blog!

Perhaps only getting this claptrap three times a week will make you all more appreciative! Who knows? But if you miss it, and you want it reinstated to daily, it would be lovely to know even if for now I can’t manage it. After all, if my public demand it…..