Shoulder to shoulder...

we stood in the grey misty morn.


And we remembered.


***

Just like jewels in jelly...

***

Every bone and sinew in my spoilt only-child bod. screams out

'Don't tell LL!'

However I feel I must share with you my most wonderful ebay friend...

jean - jbugsy

Over many years I have bought the most wonderous things from Jean.

A huge carpet bag, rag rugs, my wonderful HUGE Royal Ontario Museum velvet curtain, lamp shades, material to covert and coo over. The list just goes on.

Until now I've been horribly and unashamedly keeping her to myself!  However after receiving this most adorable Victorian patchwork bedspread in the post this week, I feel the time has come to grow up and share her with you.

She is on my favourites list and if its material and interesting bits you're after I suggest you do the same! 

***

As my cheeks hit the deck, I spluttered...

'I've been thrown out of better joints than this.'

The nurse turned to me and said

'Have you had a referral from the NHS?'

'No... but'...

'Hurry up, this morning we are only allowing 3 minute appointments'

'Yes I realise I'm FAR too young to qualify (for a FRIGGING flu jab) ...

however, in view of my rather unusual and not very often seen, stone in my very nubile salivary gland, my doctor thought it prudent to inoculate me!'

'While I'm here please could you lance the boil on my bum?'

***

Hold TIGHT... the bitch...

is back.

I've been too busy, idle, poorly, bl err, to blog

(highlight the one you think is most likely)

Sitting across a candle-lit table, the light playing upon my glass of red wine, 

the fat congealing on my plate from the rib of beef, I got to thinking...

Why am I such a super-sloth?

Five minute-wonder merchant,

mediocre seamstress,

Twaddle talker?

I'm having a crisis of confidence,

my crafts are cr*p,
I've started looking my age...
at a dinner party a week ago,this second, (not that I'm counting mind!) a man opposite asked if Hubs was my...
FRIGGING toy-boy!


I just knew I shouldn't have lost that two stone, everything sagged, the lines are etched deep and crisp and evil on my phizog.
I've started wearing a magnetic bracelet (my hips are giving up due to a life of standing cooking in a Royal kitchen for 15 hour days)
What ever you do don't feel sorry for me, because I'm on the advanced course...
Plaintive cries of 'Poor me!' reverate around the Weald of Kent.


I'm starting lip-reading classes - don't even go there!


The only bright spot on the horizon is tomorrow I'm off to see a Prof. about the stone in my chops, and I'm going to use all my powers of persuasion to get him to prescribe Krug, in order for the effervescent bubbles to dissolve my salivary gland stone.
He hangs out next to Level 42, Nat West Tower, a well known champagne watering hole.

Alright, some more cynical readers might think,
'Wouldn't the old bat get the same effect from Alka Seltzer?'

***

As I perused the pink paper...

I got to thinking...

why do the wealthy feel so superior to the poor?

Why do the intelligentsia feel themselves a cut over the rest?

Any ideas?

***

How have I let my life get in so much of a pickle?

Here's how...

Alright, alright I know its a blatant plug, but I don't care!

This is the state of my Winter room

Call it chaos I don't care!

I'm like a snake shedding skin, years of clutter I aim to share

(plus make a few bob along the way).

this is me preparing for my stall at the next Kitsch and Stitch Fair,

which seeing as you ask is...

Saturday 3rd December

For more details :-

visit

kitsch and stitch

***

You should just see the state of my attic

You impressed?

Well you should blooming be...

However that is only one side!?!

Toodle-pip!

***

Stop Press...

'I think I'm in love!'

Yawn  'Who is it this time LL?'

This time its not a man nor yet a woman (see Annie)

its Greek basil...

let it envelope you in its aromatic caress

Available from my flavourite store...

Waitrose

***

I think I'm in love... again?

who is it this time LL?

Before I tell you...

after yesterday's rant I'm happy!

For lots of reasons, not least because today was the Observer Food Monthly day and here lies the rub.

My latest squeeze is...

yes... you've guessed it - tomatoes?

Only joking - Jay Rayner.

Alright I know I've departed from my usual gay men lust, 

but hey ho I don't frigging care.

My spirits were lifted when Hubs trogged back from the paper shop with a copy of the Observer.

After yesterday I'd definitely got the wind up.  Perhaps after all these years, my being a fully paid up member of the Champagne Socialist Party was no more.

Cast adrift... Crumbs!

Two pages in, my heart was lifted by the sight of Grayson Perry...

No!  Don't go there LL.

One page further...

'The big Book Swap

begins this week'

Now there's an idea that really appeals.

You won't be surprised to learn that if I read a book that I really enjoy, I positively bully everybod into reading it.

Trouble with the Observer's idea is, I would have to lurk behind a tree and pounce whenever the innocent soul picked up the book. 

Extolling the virtues of the aforesaid, I would definitely put them off.

A captive audience is more my bag.

However I will give it a go.

Now to my latest love...

Followers of my blog (all two of you) will possibly remember a couple of months ago I went to a Claire Rayner 'Now with Wings' tribute concert.

post Monday 6 June 2011

Read it, and you will know why, I hold a lady I met only a couple of times in such high regard.  So it's only one small step away from always reading Jay's 'The happy eater' article in the Food Monthly.  Added to which each and every one of the Rayner family give the very distinct impression they enjoy their grub.

Well today's article confirmed that BIG time.

'Oyster, sea urchins, split figs - can food really be an aphrodisiac?

Rush out NOW and buy today's Observer and read the article for yourself.

Don't dawdle, you'll miss out,

 in the meantime I'll have another glass of wine.

***

No photo's today...okay...

just thoughts from a stroppy moo...

who...

got to thinking...

It's blooming annoying when I have to agree with Hubs when he said

"Now you've cancelled your paper, you'll have to read mine!"

I've cancelled mine for loads of reasons, not least because the blooming newsagent always forgot to include the gardening section.  Don't get me wrong - I'm no gardener, only the armchair sort.  The politics of the Telegraph aren't really my bag, although having said that I used to be a Champagne Socialist, now I'm just Champagne.  Not really anything anymore, which in itself annoys me - because I'm of the school of you must vote - it's your right, democracy, votes for women, equality.  Now because of recent times, like a lot of folk I just don't trust them.  Sad I know, and I make no apology, bit like politicians really.


LL don't talk about the war and Tony Blair's involvement.


LL don't talk about David Kelly's demise.


LL don't talk about telling the truth and how it must be part of a new M.P's training to forget the meaning of the word.


LL don't talk about a group of fat folk (me included) sitting around talking about crisps and how on a limited income it is so hard not to buy junk food.
Excuse me, ever heard of lentils, split peas and the like, that you actually have to cook?
Thoughts of the Horn of Africa, haunted me as I drove home, I never went back.


LL don't talk about the con of drinking gallons of water and what it does to your skin, flushing out toxins and crap.
How did so many people latch onto that I wonder?  A wonderful marketing ploy, the water manufacturers must be laughing all the way to the well. 
Why hasn't the message of what smoking does to your health got through to the same degree?


Hubs was right, today has found me reading his FT and do you know something, instead of just looking at the pictures I've now started reading it, and a jolly good read it is.  Well only the bits I understand!
The feature on Private Eye got me to thinking about my days on Encounter magazine back in the Sixties.  What happy times they were.  Melvin Lasky was the editor, the lovely Margot Walmsley as his deputy. A happy work environment where me as the receptionist only understood one tenth of what they were on about.  If only I'd realised then what exalted circles I was mixing in.  In those days my only thoughts were Carnaby Street and the height of my skirt. 

That's enough of my rambling - I'd better get back to 
Financial Times - How to spend it fashion special.
Now you're talking!

Why Oh Why...

can't I act my age?

Do I really always have to try and show folk a good time?

Acting the fool, saying stupid things, is that really necessary LL?

I've breezed through life, Jack of all trades, master of NONE.

Bullshit over brains instantly springs to mind.

I'm loud and lairy, self opinionated and worse than that, 
from a know-nothing stand point!


If ever that old adage
'It's better to be thought a fool, than to open one's mouth and prove it!" 
applied 100% to anyone, it'd have to be me.


I watched the moon travel across the sky this morning and got to thinking.
 My contemplation of the meaning of life was interupted by watching a sweet little spider busy about her life, living in my little red fairy shoes.
Soul searching isn't for her I thought.

 Why Oh why...
can't I grow old gracefully?


Take up tatting, buy slippers with buttons and pom poms, rediscover the joy of Crimplene,
have a perm, a regular weekly visit to the hairdressers for a shampoo and set, which will last me 'til the next visit.
Lisle stockings, 
BIG pink knickers, only by the end of the week smelling of lavender and wee.
Tune me deaf aids 'til they whistle.
Start harrumphing, trumping even.
Lay down stocks of (No, not wine) Steradent.
Develop the skill of driving at 29 miles an hour.
Tut a lot.


***


Sad thing is I'm not ready yet, so in the meantime Hubs will still say to me after I've told it like it is...


"Shouldn't you have taken a diplomacy tablet before that pronouncement Lin?"

***

I'm such a forward hussy...

A date not to miss

A feast for the eyes and the senses.

We'll be washed away on a sea of

mince pies and mulled wine.

Christmas shopping never was this exciting!

Just you wait!

***

Fingers in ears...

Alright I know it's not the Pineapple...

it's the...

KITSCH AND STITCH Fan-Fair

In case you haven't guessed?

It is THIS Saturday

in 

The Vestry Hall

Cranbrook

 Kent

10-3

Admission FREE

Both Debs...

good photo of her, you'll agree!

And I...

a particularly excellent one of me

are looking forward to seeing you all there.

***

I think I'm in love....

AGAIN?

Yes...

my heart is overflowing...

Okay, okay okay...

Who is it this time LL?

Gilbert and George.

What is it with me and gay men I wonder?

After watching a recording of their interview with Mark Lawson, I've decided that...

Like them, I'm going to not care a stuff about what people think.

I'm retiring to my studio to just be!

***

HELP....

can ANYONE of my 24 squillon followers...

(I wish!)

please, please PLEASE throw some light on...

the fact in my cupboard in my 300 year old cottage...

I have a very strong smell of...

Wait from it...

WOOD?

Answers on a postcard...

NO forget that bit...

AT ONCE through cyber space...

Alright, I know I do live in an oak framed cottage but even so...

I need help!

Could it be this, a wasp nest pong?


Two of which were exterminated (sadly) yesterday.


Your thoughts would be gratefully and grovellingly received.


***

Doris says...

'whatever happened to housecoats?'

Does anyone remember them?

Is there anyone who will own up to wearing one?

***

I'm back!