Oh Dear.....

I had such a lovely day.

Brunch here.

Massage and facial here.

Party last night.

Then dancing here.

I had a really great day and am so lucky to have such a lovely boyfriend, friends and family.

And then today at lunch Ewan McGregor was at the next table - does it get any better than that?

More pics here.

It makes you wish you were an otter.....

Well we’re back from our long bank holiday weekend, in the heart of Tarka country. We didn’t see any otters, but my mother will be glad to hear we stayed in a farmhouse where chooks tried to come inside whenever a door was left ajar.

We left London lateish Friday night, in a fairly successful bid to beat the traffic. We’d surrendered our eco-friendly credentials and hired a Renault Megane for the week, such decadence! As a consequence of our late departure, we didn’t get to Horn’s Cross until well after midnight.

Devon was lovely, lots of thatched cottages, old pubs, winding country lanes with hedges and little bridges, docile cows etc etc. It does seem to suffer from traffic problems though, but maybe it was because we were there in the school holidays. The weather was pretty dismal, but at least it didn’t rain. We had to fire up the Aga most days, and at 19C, the beaches might have been beautiful, but certainly weren’t enticing.

We didn’t realise that Bideford has one of the longest medieval bridges in Europe. It also has a very good curry house.

It was good to spend some time with Lee, Keirsty, Georgia (‘Why didn’t one of you sleep in the other bed?’), Joshua (‘Why are all the Daddies leaving?’) and Jamie, Julie, Karen, Sean, Maddie and Rueben, even if the kids were getting up at 7 am….. Some highlights included the day at Watermouth Castle, Clovelly and the scarecrow festival in Week St Mary, where a friend of mine lives. I even let my hair down and ate cream tea (devonshire teas, in fact) and pasties. All that pastry and clotted cream doesn’t bode well for Stiges though. Maybe I’ll just have to go to bear bars – my newly bearded face might get me past the door. At least on holiday I got to read up on celebrity gossip in Heat magazine and other quality titles - I'll be able to out-gossip everyone else in the villa.
More pics can be found here.

The Price of Fame

Sorry, I was a bit slack last week - since I was featured in theguardian, I've been fielding calls from call centres all over the vast subcontinent of India wanting to know if I'm happy with my package. Not to mention calls from Max Clifford and literary agents.

So the weekend before last we headed out to Julie's to celebrate her birthday.
(Manners don’t prevent me from saying how old Julie was, but my keyboard doesn’t have numbers that big.) We headed over to Lee and Keirsty’s to celebrate with the cuisine of two former colonies. The negotiations for the order were more involved than the Doha trade round, but I emerged triumphant, managing to maintain my demands for a full Naan bread and mixing Chinese and Indian starters. I think I might take Peter Mandelson’s job, as I fit the two criteria: 1) I’m gay and 2) have a full head of hair.

Anyway I digress, the night was good fun, Julie seemed to enjoy herself, as did Nana D who repeated the lines "I don't suppose I'll be here next year" and 'I don't like Indian, and I only like Chinese starters", like a buddhist chant all night. In other news from the evening, Josh and Georgia have chicken pox, which meant Josh pulled up his shirt at every available opportunity to show his scars. He needed less encouragement than his uncle at a nightclub to remove his shirt.

Sunday was spent sunning ourselves and picnicing at Hampstead Heath Ponds with friends, which involved the usual swim and then constant monitoring of health for the next 24 hours to ensure the bracken water didn't bring on some bizarre stomach bug.

I still have the scars from Wednesday night, where I stupidly challenged a 25(?)-y-o to a bungy run at Paul's work. It involved running down an inflatable lane and attaching velcro pads at the end of the lane. You are then pulled back down the lane by the cord, removing most of your skin in the process. I suppose it was cheaper than dermabrasion. Next time I'll pick someone older and my own size.

Saturday night we went down to the new Bar Code at Vauxhall with Stuie and Lee. It was full of an 'up for it' pre-clubbing crowd, and the bar itself was unusual in the fact that money has been spent on it. And the aircon on the dancefloor works! Result. We ran into a few people we know down there too, so had good night, although the place was packed and that meant long waits for drinks. It's open until 3am (which is exciting in itself, as since licensing laws were relaxed last year, the City of Westminster hasn't granted many late licences in Soho), so there's now somewhere decent to go if you want a lateish night out, but don't want to go clubbing.

So, The Summer of Love Has Begun.

After what seems likes weeks of grey damp weather, summer is finally here. It has officially been dubbed the ‘Summer of Love’, because ‘the lord’ is back from Brussels, and it’s Chris and Bernie’s first whole summer here. The weather has been hot and sunny for over a week now, and we're loving it (although the Bakerloo line is already unbearably hot).

Friday night we had Damien over for dinner. Paul was cooking as a thankyou to D and myself for helping him out on a work project earlier in the week. D is looking very brown, (I tell you, the Moors did conquer southern Italy!) and Paul cooked a lovely meal, asparagus with manchego and a vinaigrette, followed by tagliata.

Saturday afternoon we headed down to Balham (in deepest, darkest South London), for the very broad-shouldered Chris and his lovely wife Bernadette’s ‘Farewell Balham, Hello Summer of Love’ party. We started of by chilling out in the garden, then went inside later on for a bit of a dance. Needless to say we missed the last tube, and got a taxi home considerably later than we should have. We had a lovely time because almost all of our favourite people were there. Bernie sortof liturgically danced, but it lacked Sharna’s choreographic input.

Sunday we met the Smith family for a picnic. My day consisted mainly of lifting kids onto monkey bars. I only had one glass of wine! Josh wanted to go on the big Kids slide, but I said ‘No!’. He’s only three, but after seeing another kid about the same age hurtle down, I thought the slide wasn’t that bad. Paul invited him to go on it and he said ‘No, I’m not allowed’. I relented, thinking that if he flew off the thing, taking most of his skin off, at least he would have been happy. He was fine.

Hooray!! We’re uncles again.

• Jack Connor was born on Tuesday 21st February at 13:40. Weighing in at a whopping 9lb 2oz. My brother and his wife are over the moon – as are my parents. Jack’s my brother's first boy, so now there’s someone to carry on the paternal family name, something I’ve obviously been quite conscious of. I’m sure my brother was too, and Dad.

• Friday night we went down to Brighton's over the top Royal Pavilion to watch the 'Adult' pantomime ‘Babes in the Bushes’ with Stuie, Louise + Jo. To say it was dire would be being generous, it was full of racist drag-queens and in-jokes. We’d had enough by interval and left to go eat tapas and have a few drinks instead. I think we went to the 'R-bar', then another bigger bar, and someone decided we needed a dance, so we went to Revenge. It ended up being a fun night. We stayed the night at Louise and Jo’s and then had a late breakfast and sat around chatting. Louise and Jo were lucky enough to ride the Nineties London property boom, and have ‘downsized’ to a lovely 3-bedroom house in Brighton. Met one of the Pony’s primary school friends for lunch con partner and partner’s sister. After lunch we just wandered around Brighton, went to the pier - rode the ‘Crazy Mouse’ and played ‘Dolphin Derby’.

• Sunday afternoon it rained. And rained. And rained. But only after we’d got to London’s literary Hampstead. So we popped into the King William for a pint and lunch – hoping it would stop. Instead we sat there and complained amongst ourselves about the crap service and how nice a pub it could be.
  We were only there for an hour or so, but when we left my eyes stung from the cigarette smoke for another 3 hours. Bring on the smoking ban I say – I can’t wait.