I spent some of my birthday tokens the other day. They are Waterstones tokens and it’s a bit like coals to Newcastle buying more books as we could open a small library here as it is - there aren’t many subjects we don’t cover either! I decided to go for the obvious housewifely choice and hunted for a good cooky booky and I found a couple of useful ones. The cake and biscuit book has a recipe for Cinnamon Nutella Cake which I tried – partly because it would take me forever and a day to get through the two large jars of Nutella that hubby bought me back from France – and it was fabulous. All light and fluffy and chocolatey and cinnamony. Scrummy.

It was all part of a shopping spree that could have gone on for the whole day. I realised that it had been a good few months since I last went out and just mooched around the shops and I just kept pulling out my purse. I don’t spend big or anything but I really enjoyed my wee spree.

Unusually I was home alone the other evening and being STILL without Sky – the guy came last week and replaced the box but when tweaking the signal strength for us he managed to lose it altogether, at which point he gave up and went away, hopefully to pursue another career – I decided to watch a DVD while I did some sewing. Jeez, I have managed to put cooking and sewing into this post now, next thing you know I’ll be giving out handy household hints about how to get clothes cleaner – shoot me someone! Anyway while I was sewing (the sewing is peripheral to the plot here) I turned to an old favourite, Independence Day. I’m not even quite sure why it is one of my favourites really – apart from the sci-fi thing of course – but there is something very appealing about the way Jeff Goldblum’s shirt just slips open here and there revealing a rather appealing physique. My mother thinks he’s ugly but she just likes the pretty boy Bill Pullman better. But Jeff has the better lines in the film and I like a man with a crisp wit in addition to the, er…..other stuff. I know it’s just another of those films where the Americans, bless ‘em, have to win the day, but let’s face that is simply because America is the original ‘big guy with a tiny dick - white van man’ and will spend the rest of forever trying to prove otherwise. Now how many people have I just insulted there – but at least I managed to bring a bit of male genitalia in when it was starting to sound a little too cosy and mumsy.

As for a handy hint about get clothes cleaner, here it is…..wash them.

Oh joy – back to work.

No, that was heavy sarcasm.

Mind you, it didn’t start off too bad when a colleague said she didn’t recognise me from behind because I have such a skinny bottom now – I can take compliments like that at 8am on a damp Monday morning…

Mind you she also said I looked like a schoolgirl and it made me think of ‘Don’t Look Now’ (one of the few films I could never watch again for fear of nightmares) – viewed from the rear she looks like a schoolgirl but when she turns round you see she is a hideous, middle-aged, psychopathic dwarf…..too close for comfort!

When I collected the huge pile of work form my workbasket there was in amongst it a slightly belated birthday card with a nice surprise contained therein – which was quite unexpected and therefore most pleasant. But from there on the day dragged and my spirit sagged and I flagged.

I feel quite depressed now.

Moving swiftly on.

I made a tree spirit the other day. I went to the Weald Woodfair 2007 the other day. Well Friday to be precise. And it was an excellent day, I went with my sister and we had a really nice day – but I always do with her anyway. There were stalls and tents and stands all devoted to all things wood. Tree fellers etc. There was even a ‘ride’, you could go up in a cherry picker – a massive one, really massive, way above the tree tops – which we had go on because it looked fun and it was quite cool. I bought a polished wooden pomegranate, made from padauk wood which is a lovely warm red colour. And we saw this stall with tree spirits which are made from branches in a vaguely, or even definitely, body shape with a carved wooden face. So I had to make one.

7pm in the evening, light fading, middle-aged woman, home alone, perched on a wooden workbench up the garden, sawing an 8ft long branch more than an arms length above head. I think perhaps I may be more than a little mad.

But it does help me get through the day.

I can’t spend too long on here this evening – eye sore – but the TV is still f***ed and I want a little screen time. That awful feeling of limbo after a holiday is beginning to clear but I really feel like going out shopping this evening and unlike in some more advanced cities and countries that isn’t an option in my neck of the woods. It’s pooey.

So a few more Tuscan Tales…

One day we went to Pisa. I don’t remember which day as they didn’t always have names and numbers – days don’t when you are away. We went on the train which was an adventure in itself and I have to say that they have one big advantage over our train system and that is that they stop at each station for a good few minutes. Whereas here if you don’t get out of your seat pretty smartish you’ll be off down the track again before you get chance to hit the door release in Italy you have time to carefully fold your paper, make some minor (possibly even major) adjustments to your dress, yawn, stretch, locate your luggage stowed neatly overhead, amble to the door, get out, get back on again to pick up your luggage, chat to the good-looking fellow passenger (they are mostly all good-looking), fix a date, reluctantly depart again, etc, etc. We didn’t try this ourselves of course (hubby wouldn’t let me anyway) as we are English and used to jumping off the train quick while making sure one’s skirt is flicked clear of the door as it closes on your tail.

So we arrived in Pisa - and actually in Pisa not somewhere else altogether - quite easily and without mishap. They have carefully placed the leaning tower on the opposite side of town so that you must run the whole gamut of shopping facilities before seeing what you came to see – Pisa has little else going on. The tower looks a bit fake really when you see it. It looks like a novelty tower stuck in the ground for fun. But the most interesting bit about the tower is what I call the Pisa phenomenon. All round the grounds there are stacks of tourists (mostly American) and at any one time there will be several groups of photographer and photographees. The operator of the camera is posing the models with hands in mid-air (or feet if you're adventurous) to make it look like they are holding the tower up. I have several photos of complete strangers standing in the most ridiculous positions because unless you see them through the correct camera they look like complete jerks and it had me in stitches.

Great stuff!

We, as a couple of middle-aged tourists, had a distinct advantage in restaurants over other middle-aged couples; we had an attractive red-headed 18 year old in tow. We had lovely Italian waiters and they couldn’t do enough for us – a good enough reason to take her out to dinner. It isn’t cheap eating out though so we had to restrict ourselves a little but I did treat myself to the chance of a truffle dish for which they dare not print a price as I seldom eat out at all let alone in fancy places. It conjures up such a lovely picture of some animal rooting these things out of the ground for your supper but it is quite unremarkable to eat so it must just be the idea of it that appeals. We were in fact only round the corner from the famous ‘4 Leoni’ and the noise from their cheery clientele kept us awake at nights but we ate there on our last day and it is well worth a visit.

Dustin and Sting seemed to enjoy it….

It’s post-lunch time and the man of the house is asleep on the couch and the girlie is catching on her soaps omnibi – so much corrie and enemadale to take in.

We are in post-holiday-don’t-know-what-to-do-now phase which is a very strange way to spend my birthday but not unpleasant really as I have just spent a week on vacation in an incredibly beautiful city - a surfeit of art and culture, a surfeit of beautiful scenery under wall-to-wall sunshine blue skies, and a surfeit of pasta – so who’s complaining!

Florence is a rich meal of some of Italy’s finest flavours, arts, history, crafts - ………and Pinocchio. Yep that’s right Pinocchio was chiselled from the pen of a Florentine called Carlo Collodi. We didn’t actually find this out until much later in the week when the hundreds of Pinocchio puppets everywhere in the city were starting to make us uneasy, like there was something we should know - there was, obviously!

Anyone can see the sights of Florence on the internet so I won’t go into the delights of the Uffizi, Galleria dell’Accademia, Palazzo Pitti, et al – suffice to say that at the end of a week spent gorging on culture, hubby had reached saturation & exhaustion point and the girlie and I were not far behind.

So instead I shall reminisce on some of the other facets of our Florentine holiday.

The morning one is setting off to fly out of the country is a bad time to develop three whacking great corneal ulcers as this makes travelling a considerably more painful experience than it should be.

It is NOT a simple matter to get bus D at the train station if you have no idea where the f*** you are headed (if you ever are headed anywhere with my hubby) and ALWAYS carry enough chocolate for emergencies.

Florence is not in fact a large city in Italy, it is a small state belonging to the US – I know this now because I have heard more American accents this week than Italian ones (on a ratio of about 10-1) and those Americans were definitely running the show.

I was delighted when in Spain last year to discover that Spongebob Squarepants had been translated to Bob Esponga and had a racy little Spanish theme tune of its own – Italy is well behind with the whole Spongebob thing…..

Drains do not need to be constantly smelt for people to know they are there and it is reassuring that the streets are regularly cleaned but 2am is not perhaps an ideal time.

It’s those little things that really make a holiday though. More Tuscan Tales to follow soon.

And now for some willy nice pics….

The irritation of not having a working television downstairs is starting to get a little more than irritating. It’s moved up a notch from slight irritation to definite annoyance and by Monday it will probably have reached major aggravation but as I am flying to Florence on Monday it will stop being a problem. To be perfectly frank – though to be honest I have trouble being Frank because of the lack of penis – being television-less is not really a major problem, I can live without it quite happily but I resent paying for Sky if we can’t actually watch it. Back in the days of yore when I was a struggling single parent with a small child to entertain I chose to live without a television for quite a time and I didn’t miss it really. But you get lazy don’t you and sadly both my children have grown up with an almost unlimited access to television after that brief foray into TV-free living because it was easier to go with the flow. I, however, am still take-or-leave-it and if I’m on my own in the house for several days I seldom switch it on. And I certainly won’t miss anything much on a Saturday.

I have once again left it too late in the day to sort out my birthday wish list (for those of you wanting to buy me a prezzie the date is the 16th). About a month beforehand various family members start asking me if there is anything I specifically would like for my birthday and I can never think of anything because I’m not a terribly wanty person. Ok so I would like a large summerhouse type thing in the garden but it’s out of most people’s price range and a devil of a job to wrap up – not to mention the fact that if I ask for a large erection in the garden I may get something quite different from expectations - but I don’t hanker for lots of ‘stuff’. As usual though I get to the fortnight before my birthday and finally think of something I would actually really like. It came to me in a flash today. I need tools. No, not those sort of tools. I could one day try to write a post without any references to male genitalia but I am who I am. Anyway, tools. I would quite like my own. I should explain. When my extremely practical and clever-with-DIY little boy grew up he developed a large collection of tools and things which my extremely unpractical and unclever-with-DIY hubby was able to borrow at will for any small task that he might try his hand at. He isn’t that bad really but it just isn’t his thing. It’s not the bag he’s into. But when the time came for the boy to fly the nest he took his massive tool collection with him leaving us with only a few Philips head screwdrivers and a hammer or two. I want some tools to call my own. Hubby wants some too but as he leaves tools in stupid places like in a bucket of water or buried under tons of rubbish in the garage (I say garage but it is actually just a covered area where a garage would be in a normal house) I don’t want to have to share his, I want my own! I am planning a little bit of construction work on my return from Italy and it would be so nice not to have to go round begging a lend of the boy’s tools.

So with this in mind I asked hubby if he has got me a birthday present yet – he said yes he has. Oh nuts.

‘I’m going to spend some time with Betty’ – a lovely new euphemism uncovered this evening while out at a social event. I don’t yet know what it is a euphemism for but it is too good to pass up and I plan to introduce this one to friends and colleagues.

Another phrase that came up this evening was ‘humping and dumping’, as applied to moving furniture on and off stage as it happens, but it conjured up some interesting new images of backstage activities.

I had a good dancing session yesterday evening. One of our musicians is kind of intimidating – well to me he is because he is just so into the whole Morris thing and I still feel very inadequate in my only-been-dancing-for-five-minutes-ness – and I always try to keep well out of the way at the back, out of sight if possible, so my huge failings might possibly go unnoticed. But last night shook me out of my little bag. I had not only to dance on my own but on my own to only his accompaniment. It was so nerve-racking – especially after a break over the summer without any dancing practice – but hey, it went well and not only that but I managed to earn his praise too (something I never expected I could ever do!) I was so chuffed. I could have died happy at the end of that dance!

But euphoria doesn’t last long does it and it was back to earth today with a bump but at least it was my last day at work for a fortnight so I can leave all those tiresome work thinks (yes I did mean thinks and not things) behind me for a while.

I was pondering on the nature of friendship for a while. I have a ‘friend’- we will call it ‘spaghetti’ - and another ‘friend’ – called ‘ketchup’. Now spaghetti treats me very well, makes me feel good about stuff, cheers me up and does lots of nice little things for me, and only very occasionally grumbles about the ketchup. The ketchup on the other hand has a dry wit and it is an amusing, stimulating and intelligent companion on the rare occasions that we chat but, and this is the rub, ketchup will keep on about spaghetti not being very nice and always doing naughty stuff. Spaghetti is no saint I know but is not in my own experience quite the bad dude it is painted. As a friend I feel I have to accept the fact that spaghetti isn’t always quite what I might like it to be because people, and indeed foodstuffs, are not perfect. I can’t condemn a friend for their behaviours although I suppose I can not condone the behaviours themselves.

The trouble is I really don’t have enough cynicism about people I should be more cynical of because I am so easily flattered! But at the end of the day I have to weigh up the fact that even though the ketchup and spaghetti may have equally as much regard for me (possibly none!) they don’t both offer an equal amount of ‘friendship’ to me.

Do you love someone because they are good or because they are good to you?

Having just read that back I am not sure it makes a great deal of sense but I can’t help it – I am not sensible. No way would I be the Eleanor, I would definitely be more towards the Marianne side of things (Sense and Sensibility).

It’s a bit of a mixed blessing really isn’t it? I mean Nadine Baggott has become a household name - beauty editor of the blah blah etc. and all that - but although it would seem to be a real coup to be so widely known amongst the TV advert watching multitude I can’t say I would want to be the ‘face’ that most people watching TV would like to see pushed through a wall. It has to go on the list I’m afraid. The list of adverts I would be happy to never EVER see again. And if I ever meet her I shall be forced to tell her exactly what to do with her pentapeptides, and where to stick them.

I have become such an appallingly poor correspondent on here but I often sit down to write and realise I have nothing to say. Or at least nothing I can formulate into coherent sentences. I try to remember what my day has consisted of and find that anything prior to the last five minutes is a bit of a blur. But it is just lazy really.

At work we have little strips to go on our keyboards to remind us of the shortcut functions and I refuse to have one on mine because I feel the mental exercise of remembering which button does what must be good for the brain. But it might be that I am exercising my little grey cells on this kind of trivia when it could be put to far greater use remembering where I was ten minutes ago and the amusing thing that happened on the way.

I really couldn’t say if anything amusing at all happened ten minutes ago but it is highly unlikely as I think I was sitting here at the computer then not reading my emails. By which I mean that I didn’t have any to read and not that I wasn’t reading the ones I got.

After a somewhat dry year as far as holidays are concerned the horizon is starting to have lots of possibilities stacked up on it. Apart from the week we have got booked in Florence next week which constitutes our 2007 holiday package basically, 2008 holds the exciting possibilities of a week in the Caribbean, a weekend in Spain, a week at the Edinburgh Fringe and a city break in Venice - only ‘possibles’ at the moment but it’s something to think about during those long winter evenings.

I only hope I’ll remember it all!