Oh yeah, nd I am thbe Dalai Lama in terms of myu policiatlal compas.. Here .

well, the boy rb's aay and I'm sl.oightly drubk. hope your qweelens'd gppd too.

Edited to add: "qweelens'd" can be loosely translated as "evening's". You wouldn't believe it, but it is.

Advice: when reading a recipe, be very careful not to confuse the words "chill" and "chilli".

Last night we had pancakes for pudding: half a pint of milk, 4oz of plain flour and a freshly-laid egg. Simple and tasty, and relatively healthy.

Tonight, in the supermarket, I found pancake mix. In a bottle. You simply pour in milk (up to the line on the bottle), replace the lid, and shake. The bottle contains a dry mixture that includes flour, dried egg white, dried fermented egg yolk, salt and two flavour enhancers. Wrong, wrongity wrong. I ranted for a good five minutes about it. No wonder people can't cook these days. As Rob said, it's like oven-ready jacket potatoes. Grrrr. I think I'm becoming more of a food fascist.

This weekend just gone, after a late finish at work on Saturday, I jumped onto a train and headed off for Reading for a goodbye party. The trains worked out fine, but the taxi driver looked very confused when I gave him the instructions carefully passed to me by Rob: the King's Tavern on London Road. It eventually transpired that the King's Tavern is on King's Road, but - that minor mishap over - the rest of the evening passed in a blur of booze, pies and drunken staggering. 'Twas grand. We've been off the meat and cheese since the beginning of January but both independently managed to eat both meat and cheese as part of the drunken festivities - I'd be a rubbish vegan.
Back on the wagon today, though. Can't wait to have a steak...

It's amazing the things that cause marital disagreements.

(Rob was the one who correctly identified the one belonging to Jesus)

Late last night, or maybe early this morning, I was fast asleep in bed when My Cat jumped onto the bed. She landed on my head. This morning, I looked in the mirror and saw that I have been branded by her claws. I now have the Nike Swoosh across the bridge of my nose. If only I could work out a way to get sponsorship for it.

I've just been sitting out on the garden wall having a tin of sweetcorn for pre-lunch (in other words, the food that you eat while you decide what to have for lunch). The chickens all came running down the garden, very excited and doing their best aeroplane impressions (they hold their wings out horizontal to the ground but never manage to take off, mostly because of the effectiveness of Julia's chicken wrangling back at the beginning of the holidays, where we caught them and clipped their wings). It turns out that chickens like tinned sweetcorn. In fact, they love it. They even do tricks for it. Mind you, today was a two-egg day, so they've deserved it.

I haven't played my viola since our Christmas concert last month. It felt slightly odd and unfamiliar opening my case at orchestra last night but, as I was running late, I just grabbed my stuff, pushed my way to the front of the section and sat down. It was only when I came to put my viola under my chin that I realised something wasn't right. I had forgotten to take my bow out of the case. D'oh!

Curry. Yum. Must remember to chew next time, though.

I've really spannered things up this time. Disorganisation has reached an all time low here. I spent an hour or so going through old paperwork last night - bills, bank statements, and the like - and putting it all through the shredder. Such fun! Imagine my gloom just now when I discovered that I'd managed to shred my current certificate of motor insurance. Pants. What's worse is that I'd forgotten to do the car tax last week, so REALLY needed that certificate TODAY. Granny pants. AND the MOT runs out on Thursday, so the replacement insurance documents might not be here in time to do the renewal before that's up. BIG BAGGY SAGGY GRANNY PANTS. GOING GREY ROUND THE EDGES.

The thing that's upsetting me most about all this, though, is that we're meant to be driving to Brum tomorrow night for a curry, and I might not get my popadom fix. Waaaah.

Updated: CMT has solved the crisis! She's a star!! OK, using online renewal means the tax disk may not arrive for five working days, but I'm going to have to wait potentially five days for them to reissue my insurance documents anyway. Hurrah! Things are looking more promising. Those granny pants are shrinking back to temptress thongs once again.

We've been getting one egg every other day or so for a couple of weeks (courtesy of Gwhenivere) but today was our first TWO EGG day! Let's hope it carries on...

I've been to a bona fide beer festival twice before. I can hardly remember the first (something to do with the continued drinking afterwards and falling bodily out of a pub, and I know exactly who to blame for that), but the second was far more staid, even if they did have morris dancers and a bloke playing the Wurlitzer. On Friday we headed to Derby for another attempt at beer-festival madness.

Given that there were thirty different beers on offer at any one time (and the barrels changed throughout the evening) "madness" is a bit strong a descriptor. Rob started with Beer No. 1, and dotted about drinking the stouts and porters. I started at Beer No. 30 and worked methodically downwards through the even numbers (although I did have two Beer No. 28 because they changed the barrel when I got to Beer No. 20, and I like the name of the new No 28). My favourite beer of the night was Ginger Helmet by the Leatherbritches Brewery: light, tasty and with a hint of - would you believe it - ginger.

Yesterday marked my last Saturday of freedom for a fair while and I spent most of it alseep. Rock and roll. And today? Who knows! The world is my mollusc...

Back from DOGS new year in the peak district. I'm going through my (ridiculously large number of) photos and have just rediscovered all sorts of things going on that I don't remember. Curse that demon drink!!