God, it really is getting few and far between when I actually get around to updating my blog lately isn’t it? And furthermore, I think sweetp is just so so tired and overworked that he updates his even less. Anyway, I don’t think I have done anything wonderfully exciting, although I have had a nice weekend.

Part of the reason that I have been so lame in updating my blog is that I have been selling lots of stuff on ebay… so that is taking up each and every spare minute that I have, my bedroom looks like an ebay warehouse I am selling that much stuff… but I aim to get to the end of it sometime soon…. Hopefully!

Anyway, my weekend. Friday night we had intended to go to Longford park with the children and watch a fire work display. I even loaded my SLR camera with 1600 ISO and uprated it to 3200 in the lame hope that I would get some good firework snaps… unfortunately as we were walking up at 7:45, everyone was leaving, the display was over and we had missed it. So we went home and dropped my camera off instead and took a walk in the cold up to Borders. They have such an amazing array of books, I could sit there all night. I particularly liked the Audrey Hepburn one which had copies of photographs, invites, programmes and the like in it… that was so cool. If I was ever to be famous, which at 25 I’m obviously not… but if I were, I would keep a similar record of my life… having said that I keep a record of my life anyway, I keep letters and event programmes and the like in boxes under my bed so that when I am old and grey I can look back on these things and reminisce about my exciting life. We did spend much of the night in borders though and Peter spent lots in there… as usual.

Saturday, I was going to be trialled for contact lenses in the morning, so mum and I took it in our head to drive off to Bicester village to have a look at the designer outlets. It was a really nice day out I thought, it’s the kind of thing we don’t tend to do anymore, but I really enjoyed it, despite having wore stupidly uncomfortable shoes all day and having to buy a pair of flat shoes just so that I could walk back to my car to drive us home.

Having spent a lovely SaturDAY it was time to have a lovely SaturNIGHT. I head up to Peter’s, who has been terribly poorly this week. We went off to the local pub, it was great fun to just blend into a corner with our drinks and people watch. We were really amused by the way some people were dressed, things like totally bleached up hair and trying too hard outfits… and amused to watch the blokes trying to pull (trying being the operative word in most cases). We stayed out a long time before taking the cold walk home, to a nice warm bed.

Sunday morning, we made a change from what we usually do and went to church. Then I popped out to the shops again with mum. Peter came over for dinner and the night was topped off by watching Muppets wizard of Oz… Being a great muppets fan I was hugely disappointed at this one. Anyway, Monday morning… back to the grindstone!

Well folks, it’s been an absolute age since I last updated my blog and dear old SweetP is desperate that I get an update in there after the fab weekend we had.

So where do I begin… perhaps a little background info. I have 2 very dear friends who live in London, you may remember sometime ago I went to spend the weekend with them? Anyway, Gareth is an aid worker, and Jenny aims to be. And so, they are off to Sri Lanka at the beginning of next month for 3-4 years. I will miss them. We therefore wanted to meet up and exchange (very early) Christmas presents and say farewells… somehow in the course of this, I offered to cook. Now quite why I did this I am not sure as my cooking abilities leave a lot to be desired… and so this weekend took place.

Friday night, Peter and the children came over to our house. I spent part of the evening ‘gutting’ a pumpkin to use in my soup (first course) and carving a face in it to make a room decoration. The soup turned out glorious and the rest of the evening was spent watching ‘the gorgon’.

Saturday was a bit of a mad dash. First I had to take mum into town for a hair cut, and while there we had a sneak peak in a couple of shops along the way. Before dashing off to Peter’s house. Peter’s was manic, he was preparing for our guests by polishing silver candlesticks and tidying up, bless his cotton socks, he was flustered. I began cooking the beef, pouring on red wine and leaving it to cook slowly in a casserole dish. Then mum and I dashed off again. In the intervening period, I managed to take my dress in for the evening, and pack up some stuff I needed… then I jumped back in the car and whizzed over to Peters. I carried on preparing the dinner, in between jumping into the shower and trying to set my hair on curlers. Up and down the stairs putting the vegetables on and applying makeup while Peter went off to pick my mum up. Our guests arrived and I was still in a pinny and slippers… luckily they are wonderful friends and found the amusing side of my ‘stepford wives’ appearance. But once Peter arrived back with mum, the evening fell into place. The candles were lit and a bit of Frank Sinatra was put on in the background. Everyone was ushered into the immaculate candlelit dining room and seated with glasses of wine to be served their meal. It was 3 courses.

Starter:
Pumpkin soup, served with warm fresh bread
Main:
Steak in red wine sauce with boiled new potatoes, carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, sugar snap peas and asparagus,
Roast turkey breast for the children.
Pudding:
Cheesecake

All followed by coffee and mints. I think everyone, including me was suitably impressed by my new found cooking abilities. I astounded myself, and the atmosphere was great, everyone was talking and enjoying the feast. I won’t make a habit of cooking so wonderfully… but I’m glad I achieved it just once.

I’ll miss Jenny and Gareth… but we’ve had an invite to stop off in Sri Lanka… so that would be nice.

It was quite a nice weekend this weekend, I thought at least. I feel things are starting to get a little normal again after SweetP’s departure from working with me. It took some time to get used to not seeing him at lunchtime and being able to just hook up for a mid morning cup of tea, but I’m ok now. Last week was pretty tough as poor old Peter was just so damn busy, but Friday night was the customary DVD night at Peters. It was big momma’s house 2 this week. Although, I had a bit of a dramatic drive over to his, I almost ran into a hearse, complete with boxed up passenger, and for some reason when I got to Peter’s there was an awful smell of petrol surrounding my car, I was quite afraid to drive it home… and the maniacs on the road on the way home didn’t exactly help my nerves. I’m not usually a nervous driver you understand, but when you are concerned about something on the vehicle, your tired and not in the best concentration frame of mind, you just don’t need dick heads beeping at you for no reason whilst flashing their full beams at you!

Saturday morning (I use the term loosely) when I borrowed myself from my bedchamber lol… I decided we needed a good day out, all of us. Recently we have had a couple, but are now learning that the A46 is no place to be on a Saturday, so I suggested, Gloucester! I’ve never been before other than for a meeting, so I thought it would be a nice place to visit. It’s a very small town, but it has a magnificent cathederal. We went in and there are alleys within the cathederal which were used in the filming of Harry Potter… I’m not sure who was more excited about that, SweetP or the mini Mc’s?!?! It was really a grand structure though, I love cathederals!

Then we spent ages in a hippy shop buying crystals, before heading off to try to get to the massive antiques warehouse. Unfortunately I think we may have left Coventry a little too late and thus it was closed when we got there! :o(

After some nice food we head home, tired but it was a lovely day out.

Yesterday, Peter came to have dinner at my house… my mum is particularly proud of her new Italian renaissance style inlaid dining table, and so he had the pleasure of being the first guest to dine on it. A lovely relaxing day!

I’m still reading ‘On American Ground’ which is a journal of the clean up of the World Trade Centre, and is really interesting, so after a short read of that, and a nice hot bath, I retired back to my beckoning bedchamber.

Over the past week or so, there seems to have been a total outcry by ministers towards the muslim community http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6053992.stm and why not I say, isn’t this long overdue?!

I’m not saying this on the basis of nothing, I’m not an extremist, or a racist or anything of the sort. However, quite frankly, I think muslim women should remove the veil when in our country! Now, lets take for a comparison say a Western woman goes to an Islamic country for a holiday… can she stroll about the hot streets in a bikini? Or even just a crop top and hot pants?? Only if she wants to be stoned in the street, Western women have to cover up and respect their customs whilst in their country… why then are we expected to adhere to their customs whilst they are in Western countries? Why are we expected to turn a blind eye when they celebrate September 11th or July 7th…. Why do they seem to want to take over the world??? As I say, I’m not a racist or an extremist, but sometimes a little patriotism goes a long long way!!!!!