Alcohol or horses? I've made my choice.

Despite Great Britain's gold medals in the Olympics for various horsing events, and I'm very proud of my country for doing so well in a number of sports, horses don't do very much for me. I realise that they are majestic creatures and rule many people's lives but they scare me a bit. They're quite big for a start.
There are probably a few similarities between drinking too much and being taken by surprise by a horse. I should think that both end badly. My point to all this is that I've asked my husband to plan our holiday next year. "We'll go wherever you fancy," I said. I knew that I was pretty safe in my decision as he won't go anywhere in the world where you can't drink the tap water or where anything more than malaria tablets are advised to prevent curtailing your life expectancy.
"I was thinking of America," he answered. I had foreseen this reply.
"How about Texas?" he asked. I had not foreseen this one.
After many days of internet research, map books strewn across the dining room table and weighing up the options available, he devised a route from Dallas taking in San Antonio, Roswell, Austin and a stay on a ranch.
"I love the idea of a ranch," I ventured, putting aside my horse-hesitation for the sake of an experience.
"There's a small problem with it," he said.
I ran through the possible scenarios in my mind: bucking broncos, horses with rabies (I'm not even sure horses get rabies), wobbly bits jiggling up and down as the horse moves (mine not the horse's), I even thought about drive-through ranches (this is America after all). It was none of these.
It was much worse. "Most of the ranches have no alcohol," he said.
If there's a choice of horse or hangover, it will always be the booze.
Is that why cowboys carried canteens?

Laughing Gravy wore my jumper and we came up with a title for my book

Friday evening I got home late from work. I found my dog at the front door wearing my jumper. I'm not sure how he got his head through the neck hole either or what he thought he was doing. It was an old jumper I'd given him to play with. I know how cheap this makes me. Honestly, we've tried him with all sorts of toys but they don't last very long. We thought that we'd struck gold by giving him our old clothes to play with. We stopped short of my husband's old pants.
That would be a whole world of wrong. They're supermarket own.
After a very long weekend at work, I had Monday and Tuesday off and like all work-free days, they sped by, leaving me with a list of stuff I haven't tackled. I forgot a friend's son's birthday for a start.
Most of Monday was taken up with a visit to Brighton to meet up with Myriad who are publishing my book next year. I have a lot of work to do on this rewrite. The meeting went really well though and at last, we've come up with a title.
As myself and my long-suffering husband who I talked into coming with me, were out of the house for so long, we'd asked a friend to nip round and let the dog out for a while. She sent me a text to tell me that she wasn't sure if he should be chewing random items of clothes and had rehung them on the washing line.
Really glad now we didn't let the dog have the second-hand underwear. I'd never be able to look my friend in the eye again.

Spreading joy on the M25

Let's be honest, it could do with it.
Returning from Wales yesterday afternoon by car, the journey took me along the M25 (anti-clockwise past Heathrow if you care, but I'm guessing you don't). The traffic was its usual stop-start along the temporary speed limits. It seems to me that the traffic flows until the temporary speed restrictions are in use, but perhaps that's just me.
Lanes in both directions crawled along for miles, most of us with better places to be on a Friday afternoon which crept into Friday evening without too much effort.
As we made our way along the outside lane, one of the passengers in the Golf VW in front of our car opened his window and began to wave at those static on the clockwise carriageway. He waved at about fifty or so people until a concrete barrier stopped his good cheer.
Hardly anyone waved back. A few looked the other way. Some smiled that embarrassed smile. Some were clearly just humouring him.
I'm not sure why that was. It was making me laugh but then being stuck in traffic with the fumes getting too much may have made me delirious. Thing is, we were on the M25 for a considerably long time but the fella in front waving is just about all I recall.
Who'd have thought that the M25 could be so amusing? But before you all rush there giving the Edinburgh Festival a run for its money, bear in mind I usually start drinking at 7pm and the sun was well and truly over the yardarm.

Danny DeVito and Dairy Milk

What a great week it's been for me. It started last Saturday with a trip to the theatre to see 'Sunshine Boys' with Danny DeVito and Richard Griffiths. They were in the play, not watching it with me. I was in the company of my husband and friend who had booked the tickets.
While waiting for my friend outside the Savoy theatre, Danny DeVito came out into the street just a few feet from us and was signing autographs and  having his picture taken with fans. I like that. He's been here in the UK for weeks, performing in the same theatre for a long time and still took time to say hello to some fans minutes before he went on stage. I didn't get an autograph. I'm British. I didn't like to bother him. I did get his photograph though. Id' post it to prove it but apart from being inept at anything technical, why would I lie to you?
The 'Sunshine Boys' was fantastic and if you can, I'd recommend that you go to see it. It was hilarious.
Following that, it was a busy week at work with a short trip to Scotland in the middle of it. A one night stay forced me to take advantage of the local bars. I regretted it the next day. Too little sleep, too much red wine and an early start are not the best combination. I took comfort in my 9.20pm flight back to Gatwick.
Shame it was three hours late. I did at least get a £3 voucher. Of course, as you'd expect, I spent it wisely on Dairy Milk and TicTacs. I didn't squander it. It was the box with two flavours. I know that a fool and their money are soon parted.
Getting home at 3.30am on Thursday, I didn't really feel much like waking up and going to London for the Society of Authors New Members Lunch as I'd planned. I eventually rolled out of bed, an hour later than I'd planned, ate a bar of Dairy Milk on the train and for lunch had a glass of white wine. I would have talked to more people when I got there but it had already been a long week. I got to talk to a handful of people and really would have liked to talk to more but I ran out of time. I did meet some great people.
The only low point came on the tube on my way back from lunch. A completely incoherent announcement was made five or six times. After sitting passively for twenty minutes, from the endless talking, I think that there was a problem with the tubes. I'll never know what it was.
The things that went through my mind, apart from my lateness to an afternoon appointment was that it's really lucky that the UK is not hosting some sort of major international event in the near future, such as a world famous sporting event. It may cause embarrassment. I rest assured, as should you, that if such a thing were to happen, there would be bountiful security. If those in power were to be mad enough to sack, let's say troops and make police officers redundant, they would surely make sure that a private security firm were fully fit to handle the situation.
Luckily for me, the only sport I like is rugby, I don't live or work in London and I love to read fiction. Good luck our beautiful capital city.

Saving the planet one overpriced carrier bag at a time

Anyone else get fed up with supermarkets and food departments within larger stores charging for their plastic carrier bags?
Shopping used to be something I really enjoyed but I tend to put it in the 'too much hassle' category these days. I get fed up stopping to look at something on a shelf or clothing rack only to find someone coming from seemingly out of nowhere to push in front of me to examine the article I had paused to peruse.  Perhaps I'm being too kind when I say that these people probably aren't consciously thinking about tearing the item from my hand but they can't help themselves when they see something someone else has. It's how advertising works after all.
The best thing about people's predictability is that causing a distraction further along the aisle is just too easy by announcing, "Wow, this stuff's all 80 per cent off." Bound to cause a stampede so you can return to looking at the items you wanted to look at in the first place. It's a given that you feel a bit of a fool if you're shopping alone but it works a treat.
Oh yeah - the carrier bags - there was a point. How is it that in the same shop, I can buy a £2 pair of socks and get a free bag but if I spent £20 on wine and lasagne, I have to pay 5 pence?
I'm all for saving the planet and minimising waste but two things come to mind here: watching Springwatch, I saw that landfill sites were now a haven for wildlife and they can't be built upon because they're landfill sites. Result all round I say.
Secondly, if these stores were so bothered, wouldn't they turn the lights off and give you a pair of night vision goggles as you went through the door?

So many clever people

The last few days have seen some of the cleverest and brightest at London’s Southbank, demonstrating their design talents. Students from Brunel University have spent four days proudly displaying part of their coursework.

How do I know about this? My youngest step son, Alec, was one such student. As part of his degree in Product Design, he had to design and produce something inexpensive, durable, sustainable and useful. There was no doubt much more to it than that but the last time we spoke he used ‘paradigm’ in a sentence and we weren’t even talking about Dr. Who. His dad and I tried to look as though we knew what he was talking about but I don’t think we fooled him for a minute.

Back to the clever students: my step son came up with designing eating and drinking products (he had my full attention at this point) for those with hand disabilities such as arthritis. The utensils are made from cork optimising its natural qualities, but the mixture of cork and other materials he designed himself. He broke four blenders in the process.

What was great about the array of projects by students on display was seeing ideas from prevention of HIV from mother to child in breastfeeding to a stress reducing asthma device for children.

The photograph here of Alec’s work doesn’t do it justice, due to my photography and in no way to his project. 

Thirty years on, still laughing at the same things.

Thirty years ago this September, I started secondary school. Last night I had the great pleasure of meeting up with five of my best friends for a meal. We began our days at our girls' school in total ignorance of each other but left good friends. This friendship has grown and grown over the years.
There are usually seven of us but one of our number moved to Devon and sadly wasn't able to make it this time. There's a lot of miles between Devon and North Kent and while she usually makes the journey, it is a long way to go for steak and chips.
Over the last 30 years we've been through the usual together - difficult teenage times of first boyfriends (now we often laugh about them), breaking up with those boyfriends (we cried together at the time but now it's hilarious - I shook one's hand. Who does that?), holding each other's hair back when we were violently ill through drinking too much Thunderbird on the bus on the way to the school disco. The usual.
Last night we covered a number of topics and as good friends do, they were fully supportive of my writing, interested in my novel, all wanting to know if they were in it and are eager to read it when it comes out. I had previously told them that Myriad Editions have given me a two book contract and have my mates' full support.
Are my friends in any way concerned that all this will go to my head? Not in the least. They're all prepared to   bring me back to earth. Never any fear of getting too carried away with myself. Will we all still be friends in thirty years' time? You can count on that. They know too much...