I've just collected my new Mini Cooper convertible - very exciting but I wish someone had warned me that just driving it off the forecourt would be virtually the equivalent of launching the space shuttle.
My old car was also a Cooper convertible so there was I thinking I'd be a dab hand - after all how much could a car have changed in only six years. A lot, it turns out. Blimey, how many buttons and switches can one little car need?
My outgoing Cooper was a doddle - a button to open and close the roof, a couple for the windows, stick the key in and away you go. Easy peasy. This new one has a dashboard that looks like mission control.
Now I'm all for progress but honestly why would anyone need inside lights that change colour? Apparently I can choose whether I'd like mine to be anything from an off white through to blue. Unfortunately they're currently a bilious green and I haven't worked out yet how to change them so I drove along tonight looking decidedly alien like.
This car even tells you what gear you should be in. This new technology is all very sensible I'm sure but I'm sad that eventually it'll mean there'll no longer be drivers like a friend of mine who seems to change gear with the tides. We'll be whizzing along nicely in fifth and she'll suddenly shift into third for some bizarre reason - it's probably a miracle the engine has actually stayed in the car at all.
Perhaps I'm just a dinosaur and I'm sure I'll soon be wondering how on earth I ever managed without interior lights that change colour, but it does seem a long way from the simple days of my 2CV, which felt like driving something held together by rubber bands. It was the only car I've ever owned where you could take the front seats out and use them as picnic chairs!
My new blue Mini is very pretty and I'm sure we'll get along fine once I've worked my way through the instruction manual and found out what all those dials and switches actually do. Now I just need to find out how to turn off those blessed green lights.....
I've just had to crawl upstairs on my hands and knees and seriously thought I might have to call the fire brigade to hoist me out of the bath.
Every part of my body aches, I feel at least 110. Yes, I've discovered zumba!
Holy moly, why did no-one warn me....it's fast. I'm not actually sure the female body is even designed to move that quickly or in so many directions at once. I've never been very good at exercise classes, I just don't seem to be very co-ordinated and I'm definitely unfit.
Zumba is all the rage right now and there must have been a good 40 plus women in tonight's class, all ages, shapes and sizes. They all seemed to be able to move their arms and legs at the same time so perhaps there's hope for me yet as mine definitely weren't playing ball, I'd just cracked the leg moves and started to try to get the arms sorted and we were on to the next dance. Actually I spent most of the time gasping for air and expecting to have to summon the paramedics and an oxygen cylinder any minute.
Having managed to get through the hour without expiring on the spot, I can see what all the fuss is about. After all where else can a grown woman go and do mad African drumming, flap her legs as if she's a chicken and wiggle her hips in an alarming take off of a belly dancer, without being thought completely bonkers?
I clearly won't be able to walk for the next few days but I've got the bug. I love zumba even if it is trying to kill me!
I
have a definite soft spot for those mad moments that happen to us all every now and again.
My current favourite happened to a friend this week at work. She works in a highly specialised technical field and was expecting a prestigious French visitor.
She wanted to make him feel welcome so had made sure that attention had been paid to detail including arranging lunch for him and bringing the team together to greet him.
The visitor duly arrived and my friend greeted him with a cheery 'Bonjour', the limit of her French. She asked him if he'd had a good journey and where he'd come from and was a bit confused when he answered 'Andover' as she thought he was coming direct from the airport having flown in from France, but didn't really give it another thought.
She explained that they'd stop for lunch which had been laid on for later and then plunged in with her spiel about the work that she was needing doing.
She said later that it was only when she'd been banging on for a good few minutes in highly technical language that she realised her 'French' visitor was looking a bit baffled and shifting uncomfortably in his seat. Realisation began to dawn.......
'You are Jean-Claude?' she asked, to which came the reply 'No, I'm Brian and I'm here to mend the computer'.
It's around now that I decide, most years, to become a smidge more self sufficient and have a go at growing my own veg and salads.
Before I know it I have this mental image of me wafting around my garden - I'm dressed in some strange looking hemp like smock thing in this fantasy, no idea why as it's not something I'd ever be seen dead in - picking trugs of colourful sweet peas and conjuring up gorgeous salads made from lettuces from my burgeoning veg patch.
In my dream the runner beans are rampant, home grown nasturtiums adorn my salads and we're feasting on carrots, tomatoes and potatoes from our own back garden. Our very own Good life.
And I'm not the only one, this year it seems everyone is aiming for a simpler life. One friend now makes cakes with eggs produced by chickens who roam her garden, while another has ducks and a third has just turned part of her garden into a vegetable patch. So long Sex and the City, hello Country Living.
I have strong memories of sitting with my grandmother podding peas that she grew and let me pick as a treat. I must have been about six but can still remember how wonderful they tasted raw. She had a huge garden and grew masses of fruit and veg. My grandfather was equally avid and grew enormous marrows, goodness knows why as marrow has to be one of the most insipid vegetables ever.
Last year I did make a bit of a start - I even got to the garden centre and spent a small fortune on all the stuff I needed to grow my own lettuces. I was particularly chuffed with my blue flowery trowel and fork - it's important to look the part, after all. It was only later that I worked out that my lettuce crop ended up costing around a fiver each.
The good thing about lettuce is that they'll grow for anyone and I soon had a lively little crop. I even fulfilled my fantasy of cutting lettuce from my own garden for a salad - twice. Unfortunately I then disappeared off on holiday and the family forgot about them so I returned to a dead brown mulch.
The little son and I had a go at runner beans after someone told me they were easy to grow. We built the wigwam in one of the flower beds, followed the instructions to a T but still ended up with the sum total of three stringy beans. It would seem I haven't inherited my granny's green fingers.
But I refuse to give up and this year we're going to have another bash. I've made a good start - I'm watching Gardener's World. I just haven't actually made it into my garden yet....but, hey, we've all got to start somewhere.
I thought that at 16 the big son would have grown out of hide and seek.
It's not him hiding behind sofas or in the understairs cupboard for me to find. No, he has decided that obviously I just love to spend hours searching the house for the phone.
There are four phones in this house so you'd think that at least one would be where it should be when I come to want to use the landline. No chance. I thought I was being really clever having one handset on my bedside table but that didn't fool him, not once in recent weeks has that one been anywhere near my bedroom.
Like so many teenagers he has a worryingly short attention span which means hide and seek can demand an innovative approach. He obviously takes the game seriously and goes out of his way to make sure that I get the full benefits of the search. I've learned that it's no good just scouring the obvious places, like the sofas or his bedroom. Actually there's no point presuming the missing phones might even be in the house, oh no, he's decided to make the game a lot more demanding by including the outdoors too now. What fun.
I recently found one in the garden on top of the rabbit hutch - abandoned there while he was cleaning the rabbits out and then wandered off when something more interesting came along.
Then there was the one that ended up in the laundry basket, hurled in there with his clothes. Goodness only knows how all four have so far mananged to escape a twirl in the washing machine.
So as well as 'flush and wash' they'll also be engraving 'where's the bloody phone?' on my epitaph.
I've come over all rock chick, although getting in the requisite spray on leather trousers might be a bit of a challenge.
I'm going to Reading Festival. For the first time. As an ex-music critic I've done a few festivals in my time but Reading was always the slightly scary one where the serious rockers went. It was the one I steered clear of even as an up for most things 20-something year old. Yet here I am about to be a Reading virgin no more.
I like my comforts and would normally not be seen within miles of anything that involves any of the following - a field (probably muddy), having to wear wellies, sweaty men in vests, people peeing into bottles and then thinking it's fun to throw them, car parks that are so far from the site that they are virtually in the next county. Put them together and that's my idea of hell.....
So, clearly, I'm not a festival natural. I once went to Glastonbury - once being the operative word, the loos were enough to put me off for life. Give me a nice seat in a stadium and I'm happy. Unfortunately Muse and Elbow thought it more fun to play in a field near Reading, so that's where I'm going to have to be. I love Muse and have seen them before.....well, heard might be more accurate.
I had no idea when I booked seats at the MEN in Manchester that it was so steep. Row R turned out to be one down from the cloud level and my fear of heights had me crawling on my hands and knees to the safety of the walkway, where I stayed for the entire gig. Muse sounded fantastic, I just never saw a thing.
I'm looking forward to not just hearing them this time but, hopefully, seeing them as well even if they are dots on the stage. That'll be because I'll be the one at the back complete with Reading survival kit - toilet roll (lots); my flowery Cath Kidston fold up chair, my Kindle for when the boring shouty bands are on, elderflower presse, factor 30 sunblock and purple spotty oilcloth mac (you never know what the weather will be like in August), picnic. I'm sure I'll blend in nicely!
It's about this time of year every year that the dreaded d word rears its head again. Yes, that one, don't worry I'll whisper it........diet.
Dreaded, dull, despicable, desperate, deadly, damned........dieting. How I hate it with a passion.
Every March I have that moment of realisation that, once again, I seem to have been living under the misapprehension that I need to double my body weight during the winter to see me through the cold months and to keep me going. The fact I'm not a squirrel or a grizzly bear who hibernates all winter seems to have passed me by. Unfortunately it means that every blasted year I come out of winter much heavier than I went into it. You'd think I'd learn.
So, round about now every year, the long slog begins. I work out how much I want to lose, how many weeks until my holiday and then I.......panic. Is it actually possible to lose 4lbs a week for 10 weeks (actually I'm exaggerating, it's not that bad fortunately).
I've never been one of those women who thinks her life will be perfect if she's a size 10 but when I stop being able to see my knees is when I know the time has come for the d word, again.
Once again the thought of the swimsuit looms large (large currently being the operative word) and I know it's time to forsake the carbs, chocs and vino if I'm not to be swathed from head to toe in a sarong all holiday. There are actually times when I think reintroducing those Victorian bathing huts would be a great idea.....
This year's d word starts this week with a return to fat club, as I unaffectionately call it. Yes the weekly joy of standing on the scales and then jumping around and realising just how unfit I am, as I gasp for breath, is about to begin again. Oh deep joy, I can hardly wait.
A friend is starting her own d word soon after so we'll be encouraing each other and physically barring the way to the biscuit tin when necessary. She arrived back from lunch today with a bag of mini creme eggs each, because as she so rightly put it, we haven't started the dreaded diets yet so we owe it to ourselves to enjoy ourselves while we still can! Great logic. That's probably another couple of pounds on then......
