The Flying Dutchman Rides Again

Have just come back from the most amazing lunch at locanda locatelli - mmmmmm! I wondered after all the incredible food we ate in Italy, if Italian food in England was ever going to be as good, but this really did top it all (and so it should with 2 Michelin stars!)

Perhaps this meal could be topped though, by the delights on offer at "International Evening" at school tomorrow, where all the loving parents are going with their offspring for an evening of international cuisine (everyone has to take a dish typical of their country - I made Yorkshire Parkin, after all, it's practically a different nation isn't it?) As one of the other mum's said "there'll be wine there, please come" I felt I could hardly refuse! Daddy was very sulky at the prospect, but I appear to have convinced him (again I think the lure of the wine could have had something to do with it, not to to mention my killer parkin of course!)

As part of International Week, tied in (as Princess O proudly told me) with Black History Month, the kids all had to go to school yesterday in their national dress (which could include football kit for the two children of purely English descent). Thankfully some old neighbours of ours who were from St Petersburg had given us a mini Russian folk outfit, so I forced Princess O into it and made her promise to say it was Lithuanian (not too much of a stretch) as her Grandma is from there. Of course when I overheard her telling someone at school, she spoke like Judas Iscariot declaiming Jesus, and whispered that it was from Russia. Oh if only we hadn't told her it was wrong to ever lie!

So, there's good news and bad news on the book front - out of the blue, I had an email from The Flying Dutchman a few weeks ago, asking if I wanted to meet up again to discuss book/film project (or at least the notional project!) Despite clearing my diary for the rest of my life, we have yet to actually meet up though. Grr, why is this whole thing so bloody hard?

Also, very interestingly, Harper Collins have decided to set up their own website for unpublished authors to post their manuscripts and allow readers to comment, with the view that the most popular will be turned into books. I intend to email them and tell them I've done it myself already! Hope they'll be suitably impressed.

It's a fair cop

A small and rather hilarious post script to being burgled and having our car stolen happened last Saturday night. I was driving back from a friend's wedding down in Hastings, on my own (or at least with Princess O asleep in the passenger seat) about midnight, getting very lost in the City after coming through the Blackwall Tunnel and taking several very annoying detours. Anyway, as I finally got myself onto the right road and thought that home was nearly in sight, I heard a load of police sirens coming towards me, which I (in my innocence) thought were on their way to some major crime scene.

Alas the crime scene they were on their way to, was me! Or so it transpired when one of the cars blocked me off and a strapping policeman took the car key from the ignition and told me I was under suspicion of driving a stolen vehicle! He told me that in the City they have automatic numberplate readers, and that my number plate had "kept flashing up" on their screen (that was all my wrong turns, trying to work out where I was going!) After about 20 minutes on the pavement, surrounded by policemen, giving them my little story about how the car had been stolen, but how it was now reunited with its rightful owner (ie me), I was allowed on my way.

They were all extremely kind to me, once it became apparent that I was in fact not the hardened car criminal they were after, but what pleased me most about the whole situation was that when I read the copy of my "stop and search" warrant, the physical description the policeman had given of me was 5'6'' (a good inch taller than I really am) and "slim" build - hurrah! In his eyes practically a supermodel (and let me tell you, he wasn't too shabby in the height and looks department either!)

I did also think afterwards that it was probably a good thing for them and their stastics to be able to include a white, middle class female in the number they have apprehended, to balance out the existing, very unfortunate bias towards young, (black) men. So at least some good came of the wrongful arrest, even if it wasn't actually catching the bastards who broke into our flat!

Which leads me onto my final thought on this little saga - we got the car back nearly two months ago, and Westminster police had kept it on their register of stolen vehicles (a minor administrative error to start with). In that time though, we have driven up to Yorkshire, to the airport, out to Oxford, plus all over London, and no other policeforce has noticed our "stolen car" or thought to stop it, until that is, I entered the City of London, where money pays for a much more sophisticated police force. It's a shame that the rest of the country doesn't exist under such great policing. If it did, perhaps we'd all be a little safer and better off.

And as if I needed an excuse for a glimpse of George Michael in a pleasingly tight policeman's get-up, here's "Outside", to remind us all that a man in uniform is always sexy.

Pride comes before a fall

All domestic smugness was replaced last night when I discovered a swarm of maggots in my sesame seeds! Urgh! It was so disgusting I nearly puked. Am going to have to have a full de-maggotting of all dry goods tonight too, as I'm sure there must be more lurking in the cupboard. Where do they come from? It was truly horrendous.

And on top of that Princess O is waking up every night because she's scared of the dark, despite the fact that she has a night light and now a Fifi and the Flowertots doll which lights up and sings a lullaby when you press its tummy. I'm at the end of my endurance with it, and I really don't know what to do next.

Even more depressing, I'm starting to feel a bit sick about all this website/Facebook malarkey with my book, being consumed by fear and self-loathing, that it's a stupid idea, will never work, that the book is crap anyway, etc, etc. Argh!

Domestic Goddesses R US

Am feeling a bit tired today, but totally smug after a ridiculously domestic weekend which included: hanging all my washing outside to dry on the line (doubt there'll be much more of that this year, and there's been precious little already); harvesting some vegetables from the garden (lettuce, tomatoes, courgettes and beans) then turning them into delicious homemade food for a picnic, supplemented by some extra veg from the organic box! (The culinary goodies were courgette fritata, middle eastern aubergine dip and green bean and tomato salad, yum!)

Took princess O to aforementioned picnic in Regent's Park with a couple of my friends - we had to pretend to be a family of donkeys which turned out to be slightly embarrassing walking around on all fours and munching on grass, but she loved being our keeper.

The culmination of the domesticity came only last night though, when I used the carcass of the chicken (organic naturally) that we had for dinner on Sunday evening and boiled it up with some more veg to make fresh chicken stock. I swear I had a moment of deep joy looking at the jug of fragrant amber as I put it in the fridge this morning. Trouble is, I'm so knackered by all this housewifery that I'm not sure I'm actually going to be able to manage to make anything with it before it goes off! (And as soon as I put it in the freezer I know I'll never remember to defrost it till it's too late.)

Anyway, it was quite pleasurable after a summer of childlessness and then being away on holiday, to just come home, relax and enjoy being a mummy again.

Thunderbirds are Go!

Wow, I've finally done it, the website is live. I can't quite believe how quickly it's all happened. One minute I was lying in bed desperately trying to think what I could do about getting this damn book published, the next I've got a fully functional website and a Facebook group with 50 members (which might not be much just yet, but give it time.)

My mind is now racing ahead on all systems to the next stage of the process, which is of course lots of PR! It's all slightly sick making as I'm generally not that comfortable with this type of self-agrandisement, but I'm trying to imagine it all in the third person, as though I'm talking about someone else, so I don't have to think about it too much.

Anyway, I emailed the local paper today to see if they'd do a story, and am also hoping work might come up trumps too. Could I be the next Jade Goody/Kerry Katona? Known for nothing more than their hideous ability to turn up on the front cover of any/ever magazine for doing nothing more than fart. I do hope not!

It all seems like a long time since I got back from holiday though (something I've failed to write about in my rush to get the website going, but it was the most utterly lovely week in Sardinia, which I would highly recommend to anyone looking for crystal clear sea, gorgeous beaches and absolutely delicious food! I can't remember being so relaxed in a very long time.)

And rather gratuitously (because in reality I completely fancy the guy in the ad) and to prove that I have, I think, mastered the art of adding pictures/film into the blog, I'm also putting in a clip of the "D&G light blue" TV ad, because if it isn't in Sardinia, it looks just like it (and D&G have a house on the Costa Smerelda in Sardinia, dontcha know, so it really could be.)

A cunning plan

Unbelievably I appear to have a hangover again, and it's Friday again - must be the fact that I only have time to blog on Friday afternoons when work is quiet, and when I'm hungover so I can't quite face too much work because honestly I don't go out that much, though it would certainly appear that way! (It's also the summer hols and the princess is away again, so I really feel that I have to maximise on socialising before real life kicks in again.)

Last night was just a relatively quiet evening in Soho (for once) with an old work friend, but in order to maximise upon child-free time, I'm also going out tonight with university friends and to a wedding tomorrow - I think my liver is going to be a swollen wreck by Sunday! And worst of all we're going on holiday the week after next so I'm supposed to be on my bikini-body diet and exercise regime (which is clearly not going too well after an immense jacket potato and cheese at lunchtime!) For a brief moment at lunchtime to day I did think I might go for a run to perk myself up, but then decided a nice lardy jacket potato would probably be more enjoyable. No pain no gain? Absolutely!

Anyway, to the point of my post... I had lunch on Wednesday with a girl I used to work with here, who is now a glamorous digital marketing type in order to discuss my latest (and possibly most brilliant) ploy to gain international recognition for my fantastic manuscript: I am going to launch a viral campaign on Facebook (oh I'm so down with the kids me)

One of my other friends (aren't I so lucky to have such a bunch of talented and helpful friends?!) is going to build me a little website where I plan to host the book, or at least a good part of it. Then via my cunning Facebook viral marketing campaign, I can spread the word (quite literally) and get lots of people to visit the website, read the book and comment on how brilliant it is, thereby providing an instant market for the publisher who won't need to do any more work to sell thousands of copies! Brilliant or what?

Of course these things never go quite according to plan, but here's hoping...

(And I'm off to get me a hair of the dog and fast!)

Is everyone weird?

I was wondering this yesterday after lots of emailing with one of my friends about her ex-girlfriend and how weird she'd turned out to be and it made me think about whether anyone is actually "normal".

I suspect the answer is no, but then I have always thought I was relatively normal, and most of my friends seem to be too, as are their husbands/boyfriends, but perhaps that's because we don't delve into each other's hearts of darkness too often. So maybe it's just that the more you get to know someone, the more you find out about their hidden neuroses, idiosyncrasies etc and uncover their weirdness. Though I still maintain that there is a scale of weirdness and this particular ex of my friend's is right up there!

There were some people out in Soho last night wearing their weirdness right on their sleeve though - the princess is away at her aunty's this week, so Mummy and Daddy have been cutting loose. (Oh my god, you don't appreciate how nice not having kids is until you've actually got them, by which point of course it's too late! But it does make the rare occasions alone oh so delicious - the 8am starts, the late nights watching films, the no rushing to the childminders the second work's finished.)

Anyway, Mummy went out with her work chums last night and drank her bodyweight in cheap rose and white wine spritzers and ended up at 3am in some dive on Brewer St dancing to hardcore techno with a Bulgarian Marc Almond-alike! I love those nights when you get to a certain point and wonder how the hell you ended up where you are and oh, why aren't you in bed? Sadly they are precious few these days, but I made the most last night.

Needless to say, today hasn't been the most productive at work, what with spending most of the day eating potato in some form (4 hash browns for breakfast, a plate of roast potatoes for lunch) and of course the inevitable dissections of the night and looking at everyone's photos (how did we manage before camera phones??)

We were talking about best hangover foods this morning, and someone said dairylea squares which to me seems akin to inviting yourself to give up and be sick, but the humble potato has always been my trusty friend, in whatever form it chooses to take, though I've been told by a reliable source that any yellow food will cure a hangover, which is why egg, chips and lard are always so good!

Ok, time for me to sign off - it's the weekend! I need to go home and have a speed siesta before getting in the car and driving a few hundred miles (not the ideal after 4 hours sleep) but my writing friend is accompanying me, so at least we can spend the evening discussing how crap our careers are and how we're misunderstood, tortured geniuses, and it's the publishers loss, not ours. Gaa.