Resolution? Revolution!

So, what do you do when you're a middle-aged (I guess I am) mother - not a housewife because I actually work full time though I do have the luxury of doing so from home - and you're having a quick mid afternoon G&T , I mean cup of tea? You leaf through the Ocado magazine that arrived with your milk-soaked shopping delivery and check out what all good middle-aged mothers should be doing which, apparently, is making New Year's resolutions. Personally I gave up on that when I was about 7 (must not pick my nose) because I have about as much hope of sticking to one as I have of getting the kids to bed without a fight or working in the wine trade and being tee-total.

The following ten (ten?? is one trial by torture not enough?) are what Ocado recommend which, to be honest, aren't that original and have no doubt been dreamed up by a panel of readers comprised of middle-aged mothers across the middle-class provinces of Britain (or at least the parts south of halfway that Ocado deliver to - who said the north south divide was extinct?) who were, at exactly the same time as me, pouring themselves their first G&T, sorry, cup of tea, of the day.

1.Drink more water

Proof, if it were needed, that I am
adhering to "Revolution No 1"

This is extremely difficult. I appreciate that it's supposed to be vital for all known forms of life (excluding me) but it really is the dullest drink known to man. Apparently some bottled waters taste different from others. I'm supposed to have an educated palate but give me a bottle of Ribena to improve it any day. My objective is to drink more sherry. It has water in it, which helps, but it's very underrated, is far tastier, there are more varieties and I really shouldn't be wasting precious water when the Aussies need it to put out their fires.

2. Get Fit
More people join gyms in January than at any other time of the year and 99% of those give up within about 3 nanoseconds of swiping their shiny new membership cards at the gate which is surely designed to keep you in rather than out. Gyms are a complete waste of time unless you want to go and ogle some muscle (Mmm). I've been a member of more gyms than Joan Collins has had husbands and it's never done me any good. My version of this resolution would have been to stay fit having already achieved the glowing halo of someone who can run 13 miles and still look like they don't need a pint of cider. Unfortunately I got complacent (lazy) and only went for my first run in two months on Friday. This was principally because when I stopped training I lost weight (so why get fit in the first place I ask myself) and then put it all back on in the space of 6 hours on Christmas Day. I'm going on my mission of mercy to South Africa next Friday and I'm aware that I may have to go to the beach (oh dear) so I may have to run a few miles before my plane takes off just to shift that extra sherry. Having been for the second run of the year today though I have decided to "improve" my fitness, not "get some fitness".

3. Get more sleep

Everybody's favourite bedtime saying

Actually, this is the one I do agree with. I am a knackered mother-of-three. I have a full time job. I occasionally go for a run. I make things. I read a lot. I go out and I sometimes work away. I have to deal with childrens' bedtime which is like a day spent in your worst work-meeting ever but worse and without a pay-rise. And then I go to bed at 11 which is stupid. I spend half my life wishing my children could get themselves to bed after me and then don't go to bed till 11. Luckily The Boy is a star and I am absolved from attending to most nighttime disturbances because a) I pretend to be asleep, b) I'm on the side of the bed furthest from the door and therefore from the crying and c) I can't see in the dark which is very dangerous for the children. Since the day my mum became ill I haven't slept. While she was ill I lay awake worrying about her and what would happen. Since she's died I lie awake being visited by images of her actually dying. They are horrific. I was there so I know. Perhaps I should cut down on the sherry. Let's face it,  I am in bed for 8 hours before I have to get up which is time enough - perhaps my resolution is just to get better quality sleep. Actually, more sherry then I think.

4. Learn to relax
Crikey, this is going to be a long post. Sorry.
I see no point in relaxing. What's the point? It's time you'll never get back. Although the opportunity to read a book in one sitting would be nice but those things don't happen once you have children. If you know it's not going to happen don't worry about it. Live a little.

5. Go somewhere exciting
Interestingly, in the article, Ocado don't seem to recommend actually going somewhere. They seem to merely recommend sitting in your armchair with the latest issue of Conde Nast Traveller. The article must have been sponsored by Conde Nast. I reckon go somewhere different. In March I am going to Dusseldorf. It's work so I wouldn't say it's exciting but I've never been so I reckon that counts.

6. Spend time with my family
A couple of weeks ago I seem to recall my friend saying "you're the least likely mother". This is because I am constantly whingeing about my kids. I am sure having only one would be a piece of cake (though not my one) but, as any mother of multiples will know, more than one of the same age has the potential to put you in a psychiatric unit before you would normally think appropriate). For the record, I absolutely adore my children and I would do anything for them. But time on your own is equally important.Plus it's the only time The Boy and I aren't hurling knives at eachother. So here's a resolution -  to have more time away from them. Nothing wrong either with going away on your own. The extra day I had in San Francisco on my way back from NZ last year did me the world of good. I maintain to this day that it has made me a better mother and can only have had long term benefits.

7. Eat Better
Interestingly, before I read this Ocado article (which basically advocates eating fruit and veg) I had been to Waitrose and bought a load of veg with which to make myself a super-healthy roast veg lunch. I did - it was delicious. But then I emailed The Boy and suggested jacket spuds for dinner and he ordered me to get my arse to the butchers to get a couple of big rib-eyes to have with a healthy portion of dauphinoise potatoes. I am salivating as I type. So, don't eat better in the sense of depriving yourself of anything that is remotely normal. Improve fitness and eat what the hell you like. Including the leftover childrens' tea, especially if it's chicken goujons or fish fingers.

8. Try something new
Ocado are talking specifically about recipes here. My mantra from the start of this blog was to do anything new, no matter how small. I know the things I do may seem pathetic and trifling to some of you daredevils out there but at least they're things I haven't done before which I reckon all counts.

9. Drink less booze
WHAT? I've just signed a decree that says I will drink more sherry. Ocado reckons we should try and aim low alcohol-wise. What is the point in that? Sorry Banrock Station 5.5% alcohol Shiraz Rose but I would rather dig a tunnel to Australia with my tongue than get you anywhere near it.

10. Be Greener
"Buy a compost bucket"it says. We have one. Unfortunately it's at the other end of the garden and I'm not which means when it's raining, windy, snowing, icy, drizzling, grey, I'm in the middle of a cup of tea (sorry, sherry), or a day in the week ending in a "y" then  it doesn't happen. If I leave the scraps on the floor under the table, my gannet twins or new kitten might hoover them up instead. Which effectively is being green anyway. Alternatively I could buy myself a nice fitted green velvet jacket which I've always fancied. Or I could be bluer and get a navy one.

Whichever way, I can't win, as I expect you'll hold me to them......

Manchester - So much to answer for.....

 

An average Monday morning commute
down the Mancunian Way. No wonder
my house had slugs on the walls.

Manchester - home of persistent precipitation in varying degrees of wetness, Abduls Kebabs, the largest student population in Europe and the best quiff since TinTin got his head stuck in a tub of Brylcreem . I'm talking about +Morrissey here - godfather of the 80s northern music revolution and provider of many a good night out for me. Oh and I forgot about Britain's best football team - Manchester City.

I've had two bouts of living in Madchester. Despite my parents' protestations and their belief that Oxford or Cambridge might have been nicer places for them to visit at weekends (and nothing to do with the fact that I skived off school too much and wasn't clever enough to get into either anyway), I lived my student life in Manchester. Where could have been better? The UK's biggest student population so plenty of like-minded layabouts, the best music scene in the world and still only an hour and a half away from mum's washing machine. In spite of the amount of snakebite I consumed during that three year period, I seem to remember quite a lot and so it was amazing to go on a bus ride down memory lane (the Number 111 down Oxford Road) on a predictably wet Thursday before Christmas. Walking up Oxford Road towards the university nearly 20 years on  I almost cried with emotion - Abdul's is still there but bigger and flashier and they seem to have cleaned the vomit up off the walls. The university refectory where I sat gazing out of the rain spattered windows as the ambulances hurtled past when the IRA bombed the city in December 1992. The bus stop outside the BBC at which I was rudely interviewed by a TV crew after having pulled an allnighter - they asked whether I found bald men sexy. What a question for 8am. Unfortunately my mum's friend called her later that day to say she had seen me on TV and that I looked a little unwell and was maybe overdoing it. The BBC building has now been demolished to make way for their swanky media city in Salford. Money well spent I'm sure. 

Anyway, further up the road the bus stopped outside my old house - this was the house I've mentioned before where a charming man relieved us of our video player. It was in Moss Side - an infamous area and one where gangs routinely fought out their battles in the forecourt of the petrol station across the road - and just down the road from the Pattie & Dumpling Shop where Benji Stanley was shot dead. It was a real shocker at the time - he was just a 14 year old kid and apparently only a few years ago the police discovered it was a case of mistaken identity. I tell you, when you've lived in Moss Side and are lulled to sleep every night by the drone of a police helicopter sweeping the alleyways between the houses, you can handle just about anything. I'd like to think it toughened me up but I still have a pathological fear of goats cheese.                                                        

                                                    Curle on Curl action

Curly Watts - my all time favourite
City fan. Perhaps.

Keith Curle - one time player and big head.
"I'll have 50 quid on myself to score the 1st goal"
"Sorry, and you are........?"

So, what has Manchester ever done for us? It's produced Man City, the club I worked at when I was a student taking bets in the executive boxes from soap stars (Curly from Coronation Street) and working for a Morrissey lookalike called Rob whose false teeth (not sure why he had them, he was only about 26) used to fall out when City scored. Then after a midweek match we'd measure and tweak his quiff and go with him to Smiths Night at a club in town - I'd like to say it was at the Hacienda but I think that's my mind playing wishful tricks on me - and slope around to the dulcet tones of Morrissey wishing for a quick death by jugganaut or telling Manchester it had so much to answer for.

Honestly, I could go on about Manchester for hours as you can see. I'm in love with it and always have been. Mancunians call a spade a spade (the jacket potato shop "Spud-u-like" has been replaced by a fast food joint called "Fatso's"),  Man City have a better stadium than Utd (technically Old Trafford isn't even within the city's boundaries. Ha! and let's face it, 99% of Utd supporters haven't ever set foot in Manchester - take The Boy for example), it produced the world's first computer and also split the atom. It gave us New Order, The Smiths, Oasis, The Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses amongst others and, rather bizarrely, is twinned with Puerto Cabazas in Nicaragua about which I can't tell you much at all. Indeed anything. Do they get earthquakes in Nicaragua? You do in Manchester. The earth literally moved for me there...

I would go and live there again though would possibly have to do so on my own as there's no way I'd get The Boy up there. His nose starts to bleed if he goes north of Cirencester.

Mad for it!

Wonderful, Wonderful Copenhagen

Tak

That's the Danish word for thank you, but also an adjective for some of the complete rubbish sold in the Christmas markets in Copenhagen. We ticked off a first on the cities list this weekend and actually stopped there instead of by-passing it enroute to an industrial estate in Odense (see previous blog on pickled herrings). And what an amazing city it is. We went for the Christmas markets but, actually, we only found one (can't have been looking that hard) and, apart from a very popular Glogg cabin and a hut selling glass Danish flag tree decorations, it was selling really bad shoes which you could buy at home any day if you were suddenly overcome with such a desire. Having just got back from Manchester, it seems all the good Christmas markets are there. Who'd have thought it?

Tak did become a much used word this weekend because the Danes are SO nice. It's very rewarding to have your faith in human nature restored and at the same time drink your bodyweight in champagne and Barbera and not get charged for it. This is what happened when we arrived at the bistro we had booked for dinner on the first night (Adendum). A sign in Danish on the door said (presumably) "Closed - private function". The manager explained he'd been trying to call us for a couple of days. Yeah, right, we thought. He disappeared with the phone, came back, poured us two glasses of champagne, gave us a plate of salted almonds and 400 Krone and said he'd booked a taxi to take us to their sister restaurant where the owner would be waiting for us with more champagne. Happy Days. And so off we trotted to Bibendum where, indeed, there was more champagne, a very fine meal and we weren't charged for our wine either. Consequently we ended up going back to Adendum twice over the weekend. Who said customer service was dead?

Can't explain the dummies

Denmark has a relatively high suicide rate - presumably because the hours of darkness are long, winters are arctic and wine is bloody expensive. But even given that, we were surprised to see so many padlocks strung along the wires of a footbridge spanning the river. Like flowers by the roadside we assumed they had been placed there in memory of those who had fallen to their deaths into the river below but then two things struck us - there were literally thousands of them and the river was only about 6 ft below the bridge. Even the most determined would have been hard-pushed to even break a fingernail falling from there. On closer inspection it turned out that they were padlocks of luuuuuurve. I suppose there's not much else to do when it's dark and sub-zero and wine is so expensive.

"It's not the cough that carries you off,
it's the coffin they carry you off in"
attributed to my gran, c 1982

Ironically, if you are heading towards that bridge with the sole intention of hurling yourself into the icy waters below, you pass a shop window on the way which has a very fine coffin in it. I kid you not. Perhaps the Danes would rather choose their own than rely on their relatives to select an appropriate one - it's actually a very sensible thing to do. I can tell you now that I don't want pink lining in mine.

 I expect that coffin is very expensive, like everything else. It didn't have a price tag and if you have to ask you can't afford it. It costs £12 to get into Tivoli Gardens, the only option once you're inside being to spend even more money on bratwursts and glogg. Or on the world's most expensive roller coaster - £9 for a ride of terror that was so short I barely had time to open my mouth to scream.

As Danny Kaye sang in 1952, Copenhagen is indeed wonderful wonderful.

Tak

Ludus Supra Praemium

The Game Before The Prize.

We had that school motto drummed into us for 7 years and I'm fairly sure that none of us really understood what it meant even when we left. If you google that Latin phrase, it takes you straight to the Wikipedia page of the prison of my formative years, Wolverhampton Girls' High School. In fact,  the only references Google seems to find  for that phrase are to WGHS so I do wonder whether it's a motto the school invented. It's been on my mind lately because, through the wonderful medium of Facebook, we discovered on Monday that our beloved Latin and French teacher died at the weekend and the news immediately got me thinking back to how awful we were to him. We gave him such a hard time and apparently he still spoke of us fondly. How bad do we feel now? 

Mr Royston - a true legend, source of much
hilarity and permitter of
surreptitious banana eating

WGHS  - god how I hated it. On the day my 11-plus results came through and my parents beamed with pride, I burst into tears and swore I wouldn't go to such a posh school. I don't know whether it's changed but it certainly wasn't posh. I seem to remember around 50% of the year above me leaving when they got pregnant at 15. That may be a slight exaggeration. The only posh thing about it was the head who sported a fine collection of peacock feather-patterned outfits and whose hands were scrubbed to within an inch of their lives. It was a vicious circle - the deputy head hauled my dad in to school when I was doing my 'A' Levels  to tell him I'd been skiving (when actually I hadn't but she swore blind it was me) which in turn made me skive. I turned into one of those middle aged men who get made redundant but can't face telling their wives and spend all day watching the ducks from a park bench. I'd pick up my lunchbox in the morning, drive to school, or in the general direction of it, drive around aimlessly for the day and then drive home. The only thing I used to turn up for were my A level Latin lessons. It's amazing I ever got any A levels. Though Dad was so disgusted with my grades when he drove me to collect them, that he stalked back to the car and drove the 15 miles home on his own, leaving me to get the bus.

Colditz or WGHS? But I'd still send any
daughter of mine there.

Ironically, it's a brilliant school and is always amongst the top few schools in the league tables but it was super-strict (though not as strict as my sister's where the head nun only allowed "salt & shake" crisps in lunchboxes so that she could confiscate the salt. There'd be a human rights case against that today.) Our skirts were regulation, we weren't allowed to stamp our feet during the school song, Latin was compulsory (though I do agree with that - look where it got me) and the lunches were disgusting. I'm dredging through my last remaining brain cells to see if there are any good things I remember about it - I guess gazing longingly and hormonally at the boys from St Peters CofE over the fence, chartering an entire train bound for York for our 75th anniversary, the visit from Lionel Blair where the press photo shows my hair looking like an almost exact replica of his and not having to worry that carving graffiti in the desks that were installed in 1911 was going to, in any way, damage them.

Our Latin & French teacher wasn't a beacon of normality within a prison of weirdness. Far from. But he was a very nice bloke. Very softly spoken, very shy and very kind and as, a consequence, bullied by us. He's the only teacher who ever let me eat a banana in class and on the day I left he handed me a huge leather-bound 100 year old Latin dictionary which he'd inscribed with something I still can't translate to this day. I went on to do Latin as part of my degree but I've always been spectacularly rubbish. Not due to his teaching though, I have to say. Clearly I was inspired by him. Either that or the knowledge that my final year at uni would consist of 3 hours a week and that was on a Monday. It does make you wonder why some people want to do medicine when they could do Latin.

This really is sort of an homage to a lovely man who taught a bunch of girls who are quite upset about his death 22 years after last seeing him. As someone posted  - "Kids - be nice to your teachers as its only when its too late do you really appreciate how fab they were". It's so true. Teenagers are possibly amongst the most evil creatures on the planet. I know, I've seen them getting the train home from Salisbury.

Anyway, there's a very fine rendition of the school song on You Tube. This was recorded in 2010 but still gives you an idea of how truly dreadful it was. Their voices are better than ours were and they don't stamp their feet.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=kEaVSLBphik&NR=1
Bizarrely, I have known the words off by heart for the last 29 years which is scary and the same amount of time as I have known the words to Billy Joel's Uptown Girl. 

I'd still send any daughter of mine there. Watch out Molly!

I'm gonna beat that rat, that's what I'm gonna do....

I think 4 bereavements in 18 months is enough for anyone. My Mum, my grandad, Paddington the ginger tom then Euston the silver tabby. Today I had to say goodbye to the rat in mi kitchen (utility room). The Rat Catcher Extraordinaire arrived this morning, unscrewed the skirting under the cupboard and we discovered our little furry rodent friend sleeping peacefully and permanently in his nest. My, he was big and it does explain why I thought there was a body being dragged above my office. But he looked so sweet and harmless dead that I actually felt quite sad. Still, he's now residing in a Waitrose carrier bag in the bin outside and we're 80 quid lighter.

"Just let me at 'im.....see how
mean and menacing I am"

So, I'm not sure if it was the presence of rodents in the cavities that prompted The Boy to exclaim in front of the children "perhaps it's about time we got another cat" or it might have been the beer and wine he'd had in the run up but the upshot is that next week we are rescuing a grey kitten. He's ex-feral, if there is such a state as ex-feral or would you say he's a reformed feral? The point is he was a farm kitten and so mousing should be in his blood. He should be able to smell a rat from 500 cat paces though at the moment, if our rodent was alive, I'd put money on him to win any cat v rat fight.

Talking of rats, I had a nice visit from British Transport Police on Thursday. She was lovely and had been sent to catch the rat who crashed into my car and drove off during the 4 minutes it took me to buy a train ticket. It's not the first time I've had to play detective - I was escorted down to Moss Side police station when I was a student to identify the big scary man who I had confronted hours before as he sauntered out of our living room nonchalantly stuffing our video player under his jacket (this was 1992 afterall and he was deliberately wearing a batwing leather jacket). I identified him sure enough - he was very distinctive. Then the police told me not to bother doing anything about it because the burglar knew where I lived. Very reassuring. So it was refreshing to see a police lady who was very proactive and praised my skills in memorising the number plate of the only car I saw in the car park. I'm pretty sure it was him -he was busy doing a handbrake turn suspiciously near my car which is a feat in itself in that carpark. Not sure how much more I can say in case it goes to court. I wouldn't invariably have been that bothered because I hate that car and the sooner it goes the way of the rat the better but a) we were going to sell it that week to get something altogther cooler than a Skoda and b) it wasn't our Saab my friend reversed into the previous week. This colossal dent would have completely obliterated hers and she would have been let off the hook so it's bad luck for her too. Sorry Judith.

So, next Monday I collect the cat. We are working our way around London railway stations. We've had Paddington and Euston and Fenchurch was going to be next but that's a girl's name apparently. Really?? So, it might be Waterloo. St Pancras sounds too much like an internal organ and Marylebone is too difficult for the kids to pronounce and could result in some interesting conversations. Any suggestions gratefully received.......

He can even have his own monogrammed hoody

There's a rat in me kitchen what am I gonna do?

Fleetingly, I thought it might be a warning.
It was a quiet Friday night, home alone (apart from 3 small children and my dad). In the utility room, fetching the all important ice and tonic for our early G&Ts, I heard a sudden rattle from the cupboard. "That's funny" I thought. "The cat was run over in March. Why would the cupboard that stores his Go-Cat be shaking?" And then I saw it, a snakelike tail, whipping frantically from side to side through the gap between the cupboard door. In a flash it was gone and so was my tonic as I dropped it on the floor and legged it back to the relative safety of the kitchen.

A gin whizz works wonders on
your sewing technique

Was that a superior being's way of telling me that a gin and tonic was going to cause further damage to my liver? If so it didn't work. The lack of tonic meant I had to improvise and turn the G&T into a Gin Whizz which is basically Gin & Blue Curacao with 2 millilitres of tonic. The 2 ml of tonic lulls you into a false sense of security because it turns it a pretty turquoise colour but it still acts as liver-stripper. Actually it proved a nice blast from the past because as soon as I'd made it I remembered it was mum's favourite cocktail and she was a fairly abstemious and very elegant lady and that made me much calmer.

Needless to say, this morning I called the rat-catcher extraordinaire. At least, I called Barry's number to find that he had bought a canal boat and gone "sailing" for 3 years with his wife. Rat Catcher Mark II (his name was actually Mark and he had bought Barry's pest control business off him) promptly dropped what he was doing (wasps nest in Hindon? squirrel in Tisbury?) and hot-footed it over here. How glad was I. He indeed confirmed that we have a mutant rat. I know he's mutant - I saw his tail. It turns out he had tunneled from outside, under the house, into the cupboard in the utility room and eaten all our poor deceased cat's Go-Cat ( I suppose you're asking why it was still in the cupboard 8 months after Euston died but I've always been quite poor at letting go and you should also know by now that I am the original manana girl - "Why do today what you can possibly put off until tomorrow?"). Where's your bloody cat when you need him? Buried under the apple tree. So, I felt quite reassured that once in the cupboard, the rat couldn't get out, especially when we had taped it up with "fragile" tape. Until I realised that once in the cavity he basically has the run of the entire house. So I spent all afternoon in my office listening to a dead body being dragged across the floorboards between my office ceiling and the loft conversion. At least that's what it sounded like. I know Go-Cat is supposed to endow the recipient with strength and agility but I bet that rat has a beautiful glossy coat aswell.

Roland Rat - I stress I DID NOT listen
to his hit "Rat Rapping" in my bedroom

I am rather torn now as far as my affections and beliefs are concerned. I grew up (figuratively, not literally) with Roland Rat, a  lovable rogue of a stuffed rat whose best friend and number one fan was a gerbil called Kevin. They brightened up my Saturday and Sunday mornings in the early 80s when I was too young to hang around on street corners and had to stay in my room listening to Kool & The Gang and Billy Joel (I still do). Then when The Monkey was learning to talk and couldn't say "grandad" he used to (and still does) call my dad "Rat Rat" and thence there came "Ratty", my mum. As she's now no longer with us I can't say a bad thing about rats but the one running over my ceiling as we speak is making me question the warm, furry connotations that rats always held for me. Now I just want to dangle some chocolate in front of it and bring a make-shift guillotine down on it's furry little neck.

Weirdly I googled "evil ninja rat"
and it came up with my wonky-nosed
hero Owen Wilson

I have only had one experience of a rat before (apart from drawing one wearing wellies when I was about 9) and that was in the utility room of our house in Wimbledon. Home alone again, and pretty clueless, I leaned over the garden fence and called to my Polish neighbour "There's a rat in my kitchen , what am I gonna do?". I have to say it was lost on him though he did come up trumps and come round and beat it senseless before handing it to me in a Sainsbury's carrier bag for disposal in the outside bin.

UB40 were a great band but I never found any useful advice in any of their songs.

Grrrrr.................

Money, money, money, ooh ooh

Anyone got any get- rich- quick schemes?

Sometimes life deals you a blow that gets you thinking for a while. Here's me wingeing about turning into an old crone while one of my closest friends tries to claw back even the smallest part of his former life. As a consequence I am feeling massively guilty - firstly for actually having a life and secondly for lusting after shoes when I could be spending the money on a flight to see him. I tell you, it's put me off getting my teeth whitened until at least after Christmas.

Wrong brand but you get my drift

When I was a wine buyer for a retailer I struck up a strong friendship with a short South African guy called Louis. He won't mind me calling him short - he was fully aware of it and made up for his slightly reduced stature by sporting a particularly fine collection of brightly coloured Pumas  - only a pair at a time obviously. We hit it off instantly, probably because he came from my then favourite country in the whole world (I'm very fickle - it's now New Zealand) and partly because he enjoyed a glass of wine or 8. Don't believe a word people say - as a buyer you favour those suppliers who you get on with most and they end up doing better out of you. The Boy can attest to this. He was one of my suppliers at said retailer and I thought he was a nob so I delisted his wines and cancelled our meetings. It was only when I needed an excuse for a meeting in London and he was the only one who agreed to meet late on a Friday afternoon that I thought he had potential. That and the particularly fine bottle of sherry he handed over. Anyway, to cut a long story short, Louis and I became firm friends, had many big nights out and ended up working for ourselves together. It was only when he didn't return my calls or emails for a few weeks that I realised something was seriously wrong. Eventually his friends in South Africa tracked me down and told me he'd been in a bad accident in Spain, in a coma for 6 weeks and was badly injured.

That was 2 years ago. His family moved him back to Jo'burg and he slowly started to recover some of his mobility but I know he was enormously frustrated - he told me he had to learn everything from scratch again and I'm not sure he's ever managed to wear the Havaianas I sent him to encourage him back to the surf. Now I hear he's had a massive stroke and is back to square one. How on earth is that fair?

The point of this is (and I know this isn't a very cheery one), your mates are very important. Especially the vertically challenged ones who wear orange and turquoise footwear and like to say "What you told Bob?" a lot, even if your name's not Bob. Especially if your name's not Bob. I appreciate today I bought a new camera (a birthday present to myself from the children) but somehow I will have to find a few hundred quid to fund a flight to SA.

I could go down the barracks and become a lady of negotiable affection but I hit 40 tomorrow and I may now be a little on the senior side. I could ebay all my shoes but I'm always put off by having to pack them up and take them to the post office. Any other suggestions would be most gratefully received.

Louis, if you're reading this, I'll see you on the beach in Jeffrey's Bay and mine's a glass of Sauvignon. A large one.