Coming back from holiday....

....is hard isn't it?

If I want to go for a swim, I have to brave the scummy, over-chlorinated local pools full of screaming toddlers and people who walk backwards into you. Not at all like swimming in the crystal-clear water off Jura or Iona, where you have a complete bay to yourself and the fish dart out of your way and the soft sand squishes up between your toes. Oh for the long, white beaches with rounded lumps of granite and marram grass framing them.

No more walks through ancient, enchanted woods. No more red deer melting into the shadows. No more taking drinking water from the spring behind the moss covered rocks, or sitting for ages just watching the evening light changing over the mountains.

Ho hum..............

The Corrywreckan Whirlpool

There is a distant place, where the devil stands just beneath the surface of the sea.

He keeps the water mirror-smooth, inviting you to cross.

Don't be fooled.

Not for one minute.

For when a boat tries to pass, wild with anger and unable to contain his frustration, he starts frantically leaping about.

He flings his tail in furious loops with one hand and spirals his pitchfork with the other.

Venomous bubbles vent from his twisted mouth and boil to the surface. Gimlet eyes cast spikes of foam to jump into the air. Waves crash into each other in their confusion.

The devil wants that boat, and all who sail in her.

And he wants them now.

NOW!

Submarines - vote now!

I’ve become addicted to Submarine School (on Channel 5), where trainee nuclear submarine commanders have to take charge and cope with all sorts of alarming scenarios. I was a big fan of Das Boot (1981 German U boat film and series – claustrophobia, filth and boredom from WWII), and this is the nearest thing to it for years.

I do think the Royal Navy have missed an opportunity though. What with all the cuts to the services, they should have made this a Simon Cowell-esque talent show to raise money. We, the viewers could vote off who we thought was the least promising commander-to-be. Of course, confusion would reign if one trainee stopped paying enough attention to his periscope(?) to garner voter support by playing to the cameras instead, or flinging bitchy comments to his colleagues. Chaos would also reign if a terrorist organisation realised they could weaken the British navy by getting as many people as possible to vote for the most useless commander-to-be. We would end up with a fleet of submarines run by men who were good at tap-dancing or wore their uniforms with ‘must have’ sequinned accessories, but who didn’t know they needed to hide the sub behind a rock when a warship approached.

However, seeing as I’ve never understood the point of having a sub somewhere nobody knows (so we don’t even know if they are really there) I think all these chaps should give up and enjoy playing ‘Battleships and Cruisers’ on strangely satifying squared paper instead.

I've Got Me a Bad Case of the Sunshiny Blues

28 - 32 degrees!

Yuck.

I think hot is over-rated.

When it's this hot, everything smells worse, you can't move without breaking into a sweat and you can't sleep without over-heating. Being cloistered in an office where fans can only move the stale air around is pretty grim. It's hard to be bothered to do anything, let alone think.

At night, with the windows open, you get to hear all the people around having more fun than you.

You can't wear thick woollies and pretend it's the jumper's fault you look like this.

All your food goes off quicker, even though it's in the fridge (I've never understood that).

The car feels like an oven when you get stuck in a traffic jam, and the cold air blowers feel more like your hair dryer.

I know this is an odd confession, but overall, hot is bad.

Bad unless you are lying on a beach, sitting in a shady garden, or eating strawberries at Wimbledon of course.

My best weather is a gentle, ethereal mist, with just a slight chill that hits the back of your throat when you breathe in. An autumn morning, a Scottish mist, ground mist swirling round open water. Cool and refreshing, making you feel bright and alert. Cosy scarves, open fires, jacket potatoes, warming stews and the smell of bonfires.

Today at lunchtime, I even found myself wishing I had a camping chair to put up at the end of the aisle in the most wonderfully air-conditioned supermarket. I wanted to throw myself into the ice cream freezer and drown in raspberry ripple.

Bring on the shorter days! Bring back the snow! Bring back a wonderful winter!

Oh woe is me!

The Sun, the Witch and the Wardrobe

I arrived home at 4.30pm today (I start early), looked at the settee and thought I might have a moment or two to relax. I woke up two and three quarter hours later wondering what happened.

Just how tiring can sitting at a computer all day be? It's my favourite day of the year too, the longest, although I've now missed most of it.

Strangely, I found myself yearning to join the druid king at Stonehenge next year, and working out whether being there for sunrise would still give time to make it back to Prefab Towers in time for work. I'm not sure whether the combination of hippy vibe and end of the Northern line otherworldliness would work well, but it would be fun to try.

I also found myself yearning to join the world's largest skinny dip. All that joyful celebration of skin and surf, and no-one seeming to mind who's naughty bits were floppier than anyone else's.

All in all, midsummer madness seems to have arrived. I will stand in front of my wardrobe this evening and try to decide between dusting down my cloak and magic wand (C S Lewis has nothing on my wardrobe), or frolicking naked to check the floppiness ratios.

What's that I hear you cry?

'The cloak!'

No need to shout!

Plumbing - not my strongest hand.....

There had been an odd smell in the kitchen for a while and I finally decided the culprit must be the long defunct dishwasher that sat, patiently watching each time I did the dishes. I thought there might be stagnant water in the tubes. I also wanted to get rid of the deep freeze, that had ice trying to escape out from under the lid, but alarmingly, no sign of ice at the bottom. It was always a bit touch and go as to whether anything actually froze before it went off (you will be reassured to know I hadn't used it for a while).

So, a trip to the dump was in order.

The freezer was easy, unplug it and wrestle it upstairs with helpful son, into the Skip. The dishwasher was slightly more complicated. I unhooked the waste pipe, which I noticed left an alarming hole in the kitchen's drainage system. I then cleverly (or so I thought) turned off the cold water feed. As I couldn't unscrew the pipe from the feed, I decided I could saw through the pipe with a kitchen knife. I took my place under the kitchen unit, sat in a puddle of fetid water that had indeed drained out of the dishwaher, and sawed through. The story of the boy who put his finger in the hole in the dyke came to mind very quickly, as water, at what seemed like mains pressure (I recalled a plumber once warning me that all the water in the house was direct from the mains) started squirting all over my cave. I managed to hold the ends clamped together, and sat feeling a) uncomfortable, my knees were very wet and b) foolish. There was also a feeling of mild panic rising from somewhere inside me. I started screaming for helpful son, but sadly, as he was two floors up, wearing headphones and I was shouting into the kitchen wall, nothing happened. Rather than sit there for twenty minutes or more, I had to let go of the pipe, and dash to the feed switch as my kitchen floor was watered as if from a fireman's hose. Luckily I managed to switch off the supply, and paddled back to the dishwasher as yet more stinking water flowed out across the floor. As helpful son and I struggled up the stairs with the white goods, I felt something go 'twang' in my back, which didn't help my general mood.

Many hours and many mop buckets later, my kitchen is back to something resembling clean. I have gaffa-taped up the offending holes in the pipework, and even risked putting the washing machine on, half expecting Niagra Falls to re-appear in the basement. All seems well, for now anyway.

One interesting thing that I discovered while clearing out the space where the deep freeze had been was that some of my plastic carrier bags had reached their half-life. They broke into tiny fragments as I tried to move them. Strangely fascinating, but also reminding me to have a cupboard clear-out more than once a decade.

Me and My iPod

I've invested in a new iPod. 'What fun!' I thought, remembering one I had before which gave me hours of happiness. Sadly, this one hasn't been a great experience so far. Apart from the fact it took several hours of grating frustration to even get a reasonable proportion of the tracks I had paid for onto my computer (and my son having to buy me an extra hard drive to help) it still hasn't really come together as hoped. Since the Skip had a new starter motor put in ('engine out job' the bloke behind the counter said, looking suitably depressed) the radio/cassette player(yes, you read right, cassette player) hasn't worked. So I was very pleased to plug myself into my new ipod for a long journey. Sadly, as the tracks changed, I received what seemed to be a mild electric shock.

I think it might be something to do with my ear-rings short circuiting and then something odd happening to my brain. I never was any good at the electric bit of physics at school, so it's all a bit of a mystery.

Having exerted so much effort getting the little device to work, I'm eschewing any safety concerns and ploughing on regardless. It might even be beneficial to have a little bit of electro-convulsive therpay to jolly up some of the more depressing tracks. Just to be on the safe side, I might return the solid platinum and diamond ear-rings to the shop next to the tube station too, and definitely not wear them in electric storms.

Empathy not Sympathy

I'm going deaf, at least I think I'm going deaf. It's hard to tell - I have tinnitus.

I realised for once and for all that this was becoming quite extreme while having my most recent hearing test. I was really struggling to differentiate the electronic bleeps from the cacophony in my head. The results were bleak, quite a drop from the last test only months previously. As a result, I am still not clear whether my actual hearing is affected, or whether it is the wall of sound I am trying to hear through that is causing the problem.

When I tell people this, in the hope they will understand why I sometimes either apparently ignore them, or give an answer to a question they hadn't asked, they quite often say, 'oh, I have that too'. While I don't deny loads of people have some level of background noise in their ears, I question their understanding of the severity of symptoms in some cases. Being an 'invisible' problem, some folk are highly sceptical and give me a wayward look that tells me they think I am exaggerating, or making a fuss. I tend not to go into detail as it can sound whinging and attention seeking. These people will start to realise after they have been around me for a while anyway.

On the other hand, some people are magnificent in their understanding and patience. I have found this with my colleagues at work, who have become used to repeating phrases several times and letting me know which phone is ringing. I have been given leave to attend lipreading classes and audiology appointments, and have been given a headset to enable me to hear better when answering the phone. In our most recent office move, I was able to select a seat the reduced the amount noise behind me, which even after an hour, made a considerable difference. I have also taken ownership of a hearing aid, but sadly this doesn't seem to have helped as much as I hoped - if at all, if I'm honest.

The whole experience has been an insight into how life changes when you lose one of your abilities. Gradually, almost without realising, I found myself reluctant to go for meals in groups. In a noisy restaurant I can just about follow the person sitting opposite me, using some lipreading as a backup, but stand no chance of joining in anything further along the table. After a couple of incidences where a well meaning person has tried speaking more loudly across the others, and me ending up feeling embarrassed, I started to withdraw into my shell. I am a very sociable person and it is odd to start to notice behavioural changes like this.

It can be difficult chatting on the phone too, especially if the caller is speaking quickly. Mobile phone conversations can be next to hopeless if I am out and about, due to all the background noise. I now rely much more on texts and e-mail than previously, but how lucky I am that this technology is available.

Stress aggravates the tinnitus, which can quickly trigger a downward spiral. As I become increasingly anxious on missing words, the tinnitus gets more obstructive and I miss yet more. However, it has been really illuminating to learn how my brain works with all this. I particularly remember one conversation around a dinner table. I was only hearing about one word in three, and I became aware of a process happening in my head that can best be described as being like an elongated fruit machine. The words I heard fell into place, but with wheels of other options spinning around in the gaps between. My brain was busily spinning the wheels around looking for a combination that made sense. I could almost hear a clunk, clunk, clunk as the 'cherries' fell into place then, hooray, a sentence emerged. I answered the question and everyone around the table fell about laughing - it wasn't the right one. Humiliating yes, but fascinating too. When you have problems hearing it slows down your thought processes while you work out what makes sense. Even when you do hear, you have lost so much confidence in being able to compute the information, that you still take an extra beat or so to respond. The extra time, even though relatively short in real terms, can make you look or feel 'slow' and compound any lack of confidence. It's also exhausting, the additional concentration you have to put into every exchange to just keep up is quite considerable.

The lipreading classes I recently attended were run by a gifted teacher. It felt very reassuring to be surrounded by people who understood hearing problems and learning common-sense strategies for dealing with day to day problems. Other teachers weren't so gifted, and I was saddened by a couple of others who came into the class and made me (and probably the others) feel a bit 'dim' by the manner of approach. One teacher from another class came to speak to me, putting her face very close to mine and mouthing the words in a greatly exaggerated manner, which had the effect of making me feel very small indeed. I do understand that she was trying to be helpful, but sometimes even the best intentions can be 'cloying'.

We were told in the lipreading class that 'lipreading' is really the wrong term, it should be considered 'facereading' as you use subtle changes in expressions as well as the lip movement to help decypher words. Not surprisingly, I had already become adept at spotting the gentle expression of faint confusion coupled with mute graciousness when I do answer a question that hasn't been asked. My heart sinks when I see that one.

I have been moved by some other people's reactions though, I have already mentioned my colleagues, but I went into a local coffee shop recently, and the chap behind the counter was making polite conversation. I have no hope whatsoever of hearing anything with coffee machines hissing away, and we were in a stressful stalemate of me saying 'sorry, sorry, I can't hear' and him patiently repeating again and again. He then, very thoughtfully, came out from behind the counter, thought for a moment, and chose different words to use. I finally got the message and almost wanted to cry with relief that someone had insight into how to defuse the situation.

The very worst thing someone can say is 'oh, don't worry' and then to shut off. It makes you feel completely worthless and depressed. It is also a mystery to me how no reasonable person would ever make fun of someone who can't see, but still think it is funny to poke fun at those of us with a hearing problem. If I hear one more person go 'pardon?' with a cheeky smile after I have explained about my difficulties, I won't be responsible for my actions.

A Corner of Some Foreign Field

When you watch a good film, it hangs around in your head. Sometimes for years. I had 'Johnny Got Your Gun' imprinted on my mind for a few decades. The imagery of Jesus riding in the guard wagon of a troop carrying train on its way to the front line of the first world war, the paralysed soldier hallucinating that rats were jumping on his face. The horror was bald, raw and quietly excoriating. It was brought up again a few months ago when my son told me he had watched an horrific film the night before. I just knew what it was, and I was right.

I've read quite a lot about the horrors of war, the conditions in the trenches,the lives of the fighter pilots in the second and what Vietnam was like. It astonishes me that with so much literature and other documentary evidence available, young men and women will still go to war. Or maybe it is us, society, that is belying belief to still be sending them, to expect them to donate their limbs, lives or sanity for whatever cause is politically correct at the time.

That is not to diminish the bravery of those who take risks and show great courage in times of immense stress, but more to diminish all of us who's failure to find a better solution sends young men and women into their own personal armageddon. There are many MPs we can't trust not to fiddle their expenses, yet we trust them to make the decisions to send our best into situations so grotesque we may never be shown them. Heavy censorship will prevent us ever really understanding the conditions in places like Afghanistan, what we see in the press will always be a thin truth.

We need the artists, film-makers, poets and writers to find a way to bring the reality home.

And all this madness, all this rage, all this flaming death of our civilization and our hopes, has been brought about because a set of official gentlemen, living luxurious lives, mostly stupid, and all without imagination or heart, have chosen that it should occur rather than that any one of them should suffer some infinitesimal rebuff to his country`s pride. Bertrand Russell 1914

Writing a Note to the World

I like words, it's a way of getting to who you really are, beyond your physical envelope. Behind a blog it doesn't matter about your age, your race, any disability and so on.

Being able to use words well is a gift. They don't have to be long words, or showy words. Some of the best writers can use plain words with great eloquence. The real skill starts more with observation. A person who can detect nuances in behaviour, and then is equipped with the tools to describe them from their unique viewpoint, can make for stirring stuff.

It used to be the pen that was mightier than the sword, but now its the keyboard. You can lie in bed and write a note to the world from a tiny little computer. Having access to the internet is like having the fountain of all knowledge tucked next to your pillow - a torrent of facts and feelings.

Using the web is more reliable than sending a message out in a bottle. The latter did have a certain romance about it when I was younger, the idea you could send a letter to someone you had never met. And now, here we bloggers are, throwing our bottles into the waves with shattering frequency.

It's intriguing to think which shores the messages are washing up on.

A Princely Sum

There was a magazine in a clinic that caught my eye recently. There was a slogan writ large, 'Get Older, Go Faster!' accompanied by a glossy photo of a silver haired, lycra clad chap sporting a rictus smile. He was on a lightweight, vastly expensive bicycle that must have cost him a good proportion of his pension. He was also half way up a mountain track.

While I waited to be seen, I had plenty of time to contemplate the cause of the grin. Were his lycra shorts too tight? - they would have been a courageous choice on a man half his age.

No, I decided that his expression was down to the immense effort of attempting to pedal back into his twenties.

It made me think about how we know when we are old.

Is it when you start finding Nicholas Parsons funny?

Is it when the NHS have a more intimate knowledge of you than your lover?

I saw another magazine today, an out of date photo of Wills and Kate superimposed on a tropical beach backdrop to look like a honeymoon exclusive. One day they will be on the throne.

That's when I will be old.

Positions of Authority

Henry VIII knew that if he stood tall, with his hands on his hips, he exuded confidence and magnificence. Judges wear wigs to make them look taller and austere in their anonymity. Some people are awarded gongs by the Queen to wear on their lapels, the rest of us have to do the best we can with whatever crumbs are thrown our way.

With this in mind, I am very pleased to announce that I am going to be a Sargeant at Arms. How magnificent. I am already dreaming of gilded maces, a uniform with enough gold braid to overshadow Prince Harry, and to have everyone in awe of me.

The harsh truth is that it is only Sargeant at Arms of a local Speakers' Club. I only actually have to book a room every so often and make sure the lectern is assembled. There's no mace, no gold braid.

I'll have to make do with standing with my hands on my hips, with my chin in the air and wearing a haughty look, rather than an embellished uniform.

A crumb maybe, but possibly holding the promise of exciting things to come?

I'll carry on dreaming.

Hazy, Lazy and a tiny bit Crazy

All this sunshine is quite amazing. The weather seems to have gone back to how I remember it being as a child - really cold winters with snow and lovely hot summers. I know we should all be worrying about the climate, but it is hard to maintain anything resembling genuine concern while your skin basks in the warm glow of a hazy afternoon, or long shadowed evening on someone's patio.

The weather has lead me to alternate between extreme laziness and extreme (for me) exertion. Over the last two weeks I have been punting, skiffing (generally to the oldest pub on the Thames for bacon butties), cycling and walking in the New Forest (been going for years and never explored so thoroughly as I did in three days last week), swimming, picnicking, partying (thank you Wills and Kate) and generally having a bit of a ball.

It has to be said that punting is rather a tricky art, balancing in the grandly named saloon - which is about as deep as a fruit crate and equally as well appointed - while trying to retrieve your punt pole from a particularly gluey patch of mud. I managed to astound the cynics and have remained both dry and upright throughout my first two lessons.

All this activity has been combined with a concerted effort to reduce the birthday left-over champagne, which I have to say added to the jollity of the whole holiday period.

The royal wedding was fantastic, apparently watched by over two billion people worldwide. It is as hard to imagine two billion human beings as it is the number of angels that can dance on a pinhead. All those people, concentrating their thoughts on one event and one couple at the same time - I couldn't help but wonder whether that many people sitting still by their TV sets changes how the earth moves at all.

But maybe that's just me being a bit crazy.

Suburban Pirate

My sister and I have suffered for many years from being given the middle name,'Gilbert'. I can promise you a girl called 'Gilbert' does not have much fun at school. We both wondered at the level of sadism our parents had in this respect.

I dropped the name when I was married, but now, decades later, I find that one of my distant relations was A PIRATE KING. We are apparently direct descendants of Sir Humphrey Gilbert. I am now EXTREMELY proud to be a Gilbert!

I'm a suburban pirate! Yes, after years of watching, 'Who do you think you are' on TV and wishing I had some distant relation of note, I find I am related to nothing less than buccaneering aristocracy! I share DNA with a realio, trulio pirate. How happy am I? Time to start swashbuckling around Teddington me hearties.

No wonder I like rowing!

All that's missing is the treasure!

Throw me a shovel! Fly me a parrot!

I'm off to find the gold!

PS Does anyone know how to swashbuckle?

Sanctuary - a place or a person?

Is sanctuary a place? Thomas Becket was famously murdered while seeking sanctuary in Canterbuary Cathedral. I remember feeling outraged as a small child on learning this fact. I don't think I knew what an altar was, but it seemed a very bad thing indeed to be killed while in a special place. With the wisdom of the years I can now recognise that murder isn't that great wherever it happens. Still, the concept of sanctuary is beguiling.

Our homes are our sanctuary, somewhere to retreat to for a while. Safe from civil conviction and arrest too - just be careful who you open your door to.

Can sanctuary also be your faith? Lost in prayers or meditation, in communion with a higher being?

Maybe your sanctuary is a piece of music that brings peace and calm. Perhaps working out at the gym, or losing yourself in a book at the end of a busy day is how you feel protected from the outside world.

Could it be something more ephemeral too? A friend once explained how dismayed she was to find her marriage turned out not to be the sanctuary she expected it to be. I hadn't thought of marriage or relationships in that way before.

It made me think about important relationships in my life, and reassess them as things of sanctuary, things that bring peace and calm. Friendships that weave a safety blanket of love around you.

Sacred things.

Fruit of the Loins

I've just come back from a lovely, relaxing weekend away. On return, I could sense that fun had been had in my kitchen.

That's OK, I'm up for fun, I like people having fun and I think it's good for the house to have fun happen in it. In fact, it is a particularly good house for fun.

'Welcome to the house of fun' in fact.

However, apart from the pack of cards and empty wine bottles dotted around, the occasional poker chip stuck under a chair leg, and the inevitable pile of washing up waiting for attention in the sink, I was surprised to see what had happened to the contents of my fruit bowl.

The oranges were no longer just, well, orange.

They were black and orange.

On closer inspection I couldn't help but notice that they now sported diagrams helpful to those unclear on how procreation happens.

The graphic graphics were done in a rather charming style, reminiscent of the Beano.

The artist has helpfully signed them. Maybe I'll go and find him, and see whether he feels like 'volunteering' for some washing up and other kitchen duties!

Hello Mojo

Mojo -

Personal magnetism; charm.


Today at work I was having a chat with a colleague, and we were rejoicing that it felt like our mojos were making a reappearance after their winter sojourn.

Obviously you can feel your mojo when it is operational, but what does it look like?

Bet you'd never thought about that before.

My colleague went quiet for a while, wearing what is best described as an 'inward' expression. After several minutes he decided it was like a lavalamp with gloopy, fluorescent bubbles merging and separating slowly, glowing in the dark.

He didn't give a colour, but orange seemed to fit the bill in my mind.

It didn't take long to realise mine was like a mirror ball. Nothingy without any light, but then sparkly and spangled, spreading glittering reflections far and wide when lit up.

I love mirror balls, and finally I've realised why.

Result!

Be Still Small Voice

Occasionally a strong sense of stillness washes over me. It's like I've opened a window to something and am hearing things more clearly in the silence.

I remember the last time this happened, I was looking around the room I was in. All the objects were bringing back memories, like mismatched pieces of jigsaw puzzles, from different periods of my life. The old lantern slides from my childhood, my father's academic and professional certificates rolled up and tied with green ribbon, representing everything from the war to his passion for chemistry, books and DVDs different members of my family have brought into the house through the years. Games stacked up, with laughter folded into the boards inside. Small gifts from friends, a wedding present in a frame on the wall, a tapestry stitched by my mother, the piano somehow still reverberating from all the tunes played on it. A camping stove stowed under the desk, with a few blades of dried grass from Devon still stuck to it.

It felt like every sense was jangling and waiting to be called upon in some way. Like great poetry should flow from my pen, or a masterpiece from a paintbrush. I was either about to cry forever, or feel a great weight lifted from my shoulders.

Moments like this remind me that we are functioning on different levels, one part of us is moving along the conveyor belt of life, getting up, getting dressed, going to work and seeing to hum-drummery, but that there is also a river flowing through us all the time.

Occasionally you get to put your hands in the water and take a sip.

Bellringers' Arms

It sounds like a pub, but actually it was an affliction I was suffering from a while ago having experienced a bellringing training day. I didn't really notice, until I went for a swim, and found raising my arms over my head more arduous than usual.

I've also just been on another training morning, and now have blisters on my fingers from wrestling enthusiastically with the rope. I hadn't really considered it an extreme sport before, but am starting to change my mind.

I also occasionally suffer from rowers' arms. In fact, I can see why my bingo wings have disappeared lately, they've turned into solid muscle. I noticed this at work, when a couple of people were warning me not to lift a particularly heavy flip chart stand. I felt quite smug as I picked it up and wandered off, thinking it didn't weigh anything compared to the wooden skiffs I help fling around twice weekly. I am also quite nifty at hauling 25kg bags of coal around, so I think I am officially a bit of a toughie. It's good not to be a feeble weed - and strangely, typing that has reminded me of the whiney voice of Little Weed on the Bill and Ben programme I watched as a child. Being 500 has its benefits, you can recall these things that more youthful mortals missed out on. On that theme, you really couldn't beat the Wooden Tops for fun. OK, so it was black and white and you could see the strings, but it didn't stop it all being totally real.

I've also always liked wicker picnic hampers, maybe I'm waiting for Andy Pandy and Looby-Loo to appear.

Heaven is.....

a multi-screen battlefield.

That's what the flyer that came with my son's new computer said anyway. We decided it must have been somewhat tongue-in-cheek. That's what I was hoping, but it was hard to tell.

It reminded me again of a cookery 'party' I went to years ago, which was actually one of those ghastly sales parties where someone tries to make money out of flogging over-priced gadgets to their friends. The desperate woman demonstrating actually announced, 'this is a garlic crusher to die for' and over the apple corer, 'I thought I had died and gone to heaven'. I felt very sorry for her and purchased a flexible spatula for around ten pounds, recognising it had possibilities beyond cookery.....

Heaven, a place littered with flexible spatulas and garlic crushers? A place filled with multi-screen battlefields and pasty faced adolescents crouched over them who have become bored looking for vampires (absent due to the multitude of garlic crushers)?

I don't think so.

My heaven is windswept beaches and hills and damp woods and love, and endless tingling happiness.

Heaven, what's yours like?