On a Lighter Note...

After my surprisingly sombre offering yesterday I feel some levity is needed.

Allow me to guide you through the wonderful world of

FRIDGE LOTTO!!!!

You don't need a game card to play - oh dear me, no. All you need is an upcoming holiday and a sense of adventure. Picture the scene...a kitchen, a calender counting down the days before you jet off to hotter climes, and fridge, getting dangerously low in the following ingredients...

Mouldy tart (snigger)

Cheese
Milk
Salad
Passata
Chicken
Potatoes
Butter

Or in fact, any items that you would normally use to create delicious and nutritious meals for you and your loving partner. Instead, the white cupboard of disappointment sports this...

Feta cheese
Smoothies (left over from the last time anyone under the age of 10 visited)
A box of sad, slightly sweaty mushrooms
The remnants of what was a lovely bunch of spring onions (now looks like a handful of weeds)
Suspicious leftovers in boxes
Some pate that Husband insists is fine, but which you can plainly see is wearing a wig

Prepare yourself for the trial of making at least four dinners with this rag-tag bundle of misfits. Thank heaven for take aways.

In the Beginning

There was light, and all of humankind saw the light fall on the face of the earth from space for the first time - our small blue jewel of a planet  revolving in the ink of space. Humanity looked at themselves through the eyes and cameras of three men, hurtling through the vacuum, alone but carrying every nation with them. The awesome responsibility, and the humbling realisation of the true meaning of SPACE - the gaps between things, the distance between people, the nothingness that  fills up all of this that we see - it has never been better demonstrated and it could never have been entrusted to a more extraordinary group of people.

I doubt that the world will ever be the same in my lifetime and I am so envious of everyone who saw the events all those years ago. The world; since the first time the earth was seen as a whole, has expanded and grown and the Space between us all has increased. In spite of all the technology that brings us together, we have never been more far apart.

But, for a few moment in 1969, the world looked up at the moon, as generations have before, and instead of dreaming of what the moon might hold, the world looked up and for the first time some one looked back.

Rest in peace Neil Armstrong - the world owes you a debt that we may never be able to repay.

Death by a Thousand Cuts

Gaaah! Hairdresser doubt strikes again. I have an appointment to be refrizzed at Toni and Guy tomorrow and, as usual, I am in a quandary - what to do, what to do?

Mmmm, what a lovely do, what hairdresher do you frequent?

My hair is very thick and goes sort of kinky in hot, humid weather...so at the moment I look like a right mess. I would love short hair, but once it's off, traditionally you can't reattach it. Do I take a plunge, or do I bock bock bock out of it (chicken noise!)

The thought of toddling off to Portugal in 10 days, where the weather is currently a scorchio 35 degrees with what is essentially a Russian fur hat on my bonce is a horrible thought. That and the fact that the snow on the mountain is beginning to show through the terrible dye job I recently attempted. I have visions of getting a hair cut, hating it, getting a new colour put in and going green on holiday due to sun and chlorine.

I sometimes wish I was bald. But not often.

As Sir Robert of Smith might say...

HOT HOT HOT!

The idea came before
the picture....

Blighty basks in temperatures hotter than the Med, which sounds considerably better that "slightly hotter than the inside of an hour old dog poo". Well, this is all very well, but I am not designed for this weather. I'm too big, my hair is too thick; I feel like a bear forced to live in an airing cupboard. Cruelty.

I have noticed through the course of writing this and flinging it out into the ether for anyone's entertainment,https://encrypted-tbn1.google.com/images? that I could not be more British. I am obsessed with the following:-

• The weather
• Poo
• Sport

But not necessarily in that order. And certainly not mixed up into some nightmarish version of It's A Knockout  where contestants have to play badminton in a storm of pee while whacking shuttlecocks made of shite.

I fear for myself....maybe Mr Handy is right when he gently shakes his head and says "I worry about you mate".

What the world needs...

Is a shed load more images like this; now if the cockles of your heart aren't bubbling away merrily at this sight, you are officially a dead eyed, heartless, robot-person. I weep for you.

All the plaudits and medals were wonderful, but this is surely what the Olympics is about - peace and a small window of opportunity, however brief, to make the world seem a place where our similarities outweigh our differences.

Nature's first green is gold Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.

So, the morning after the night before, or rather the 17 days before. Blergh - feels like the world's worst Boxing Day. Just such a superb, uplifting, weeptastic two weeks of sport; makes me feel like the world is not such a bad place after all.

All is takes is for a couple of hundred, ridiculously fit and healthy people in Lycra, tracksuits, swimsuits, jodhpurs, dressing gowns and vests, to get together and duke it out, and peace reigns for a tiny moment. Seems like a good deal to me.

Oh, and we beat the French, Australians and pretty much everyone else too. Hooray.

Sitting down on a good book...

My continuing hunt for the perfect library furniture turns now to micro-libraries; why have a whole room when you can just have a library nest!



STOP PRESS.....THE LOVELY PICTURE I HAD PLANNED TO HAVE DISPLAYED ON THIS PAGE HAS BEEN CRUELLY REMOVED. BOOO HISS.

Team GB! Team GB!

The normal course of events has been turned on it's head. No longer is Blighty the king of sitting down sports, we also run and jump and chuck stuff! The whole country appears to have Olympic fever - that's what comes of actually winning some medals.

As a consequence of our national success and multiple tales of derring do and triumph against adversity, I have spent the best part of the last week
a) glued to the telly, frantically flicking between events to try and download as much information into the old noggin.

Really down under

b) weeping.

Me and the husband have also become armchair (not wheelchair) athletes, and have magically become "expert" at almost all sport. Judo eludes us though. As far I as can tell:-

The Rules
Wear a dressing down.
Bow.
Have a hug.
Trip up.
Win.

Excellent, almost as confusing as the sailing (teeny sails about 50 miles away, all going in circles), the Keirin (massive thighs pedalling like stink, then going slow, then winning), synchronised swimming (half fish-half Bratz doll pairs drowning stylishly).

I don't want it to end. Particularly as we giving Australia a kicking - joy.

The Gold Medal for Whafuq? Goes to.....

Another day, yet more images of the strangest shaped human beings on the planet. Having carried out the BBC "What Athlete Do You Resemble" (Answer: Hungarian wrestler. Male Hungarian wrestler. Joy) I can rest easy in the fact that while not reminding anyone, ever, or a gymnast/ volleyball player/ swimmer, at least all my limbs are in proportion to the rest of me.

Unlike some.....

Exhibit A - the man wearing what appears to be a couple of Warburtons Seeded Batch loafs in a pair of american tan tights is a sprint cyclist. His name is Robert Forstemann. He is German, and apparently has never owned a nice pair of slacks, ever.






On the other hand, this gentleman seems to be the result of a drunken encounter between a manta-ray and a holidaying Italian lady.

The thought of those legs on that body....shudder.

Let's Get Physical...

The clip-on human moustache strikes back.

Or more properly, let us watch the cream of the world's sporting talent running, jumping, swimming and riding while we sit aboard the good ship sofa, stuffing our pie-holes and breaking out into a sweat while reaching for the remote control.

Yes, Team GB are awfully good at sitting down sports, but they are seem to be more focussed on the sport than the sitting down. Apparently, you do have to move to qualify as a "sportsman" - pffft, overrated.

Having said that, if I could do half of what the gymnastics teams can do, I would never walk anywhere ever again; why walk, when you can perform a triple back somersault, land in the splits and do weird, Childcatcher-like "oh, what, this corner, oh, I always prance into corners when I see them, I'm just crazy like that".

God bless them, the bouncy, double-jointed, circus freaks. In times gone by you would have all be burned at the stake for being possessed by the devil - so hooray for 2012!