Bonfire Night

It's very quiet out there . I suppose fireworks must be the latest casualty of the recession although I thought we were supposed to be out of that now or was that last week ?

Here's my eldest in the garden this evening ... and no that's not me setting light to tenners , although I might as well be , the rate at which they seem to fly out of my wallet .

I'm off to the Dental Hospital ( again) with my youngest tomorrow and dreading it. There's something rather ironic about those sets of ghoulish false teeth that appear around Halloween time . When my youngest son wears them as part of his trick or treat outfit , they're usually an improvement on his own set.

Poor lamb . We've spent the last 2 years trekking up and down to the wretched hospital being told that his jaw will have to broken at some stage and re-set , that's usually the good news , the bad news is what it's going to cost . Anyway I'm hoping that this won't be the case tomorrow , otherwise we'll be spending the night there. I'm not very good in hospitals . I would usually rather be undergoing the treatment myself than watching my children go through it.

So a little light relief from a few Roman candles, a gigantic set of rockets and a packet of sparklers seemed like a small price to pay in return for the huge grin on their faces when they clapped eyes on the Box of Delights I brought home this evening.

Counting the days

It's 54 days until Christmas, 26 days until my eldest son's birthday, 23 days until I start eating real food again and only 1 day until I have to hand in my assignment .

If I were a sensible grown-up I would stop procrastinating and finding a million other things to do other than my homework and get on with it . But I'm not, so I suppose I'll fiddle away on the computer and fritter away the day then leave myself an impossible deadline to get the darned thing done. And I wonder where the boys get it from .

Weight Loss to date

Just got back from tonight's weigh in. Chuffed to bits as I've lost 5lbs this week which brings the grand total to just 1 lb away from 3 stone. And in case you'd ever wondered .... this is what that looks like in equivalent books !

Remember these ?

I bought them a couple of weeks ago,  the idea being that I'd be able to get into them within the month , hopefully . Well guess what ? I'm WEARING them , yes actually wearing them and boy does it feel good.
Only trouble is I feel compelled to approach complete strangers in the street to tell them. I've just got back from the supermarket where the cashier asked me how I was . "I'm fine and I'm wearing a pair of size 14 jeans " came my reply. Poor woman, she was probably only being polite and had no desire to know my hip measurements. Still , it feels SO good.

Coming Home

Buy this or download it .... 100% of the proceeds go to the Army Benevolent Fund - that has to be the best thing you can do today and if we all buy it , it should get to No. 1 and then Tony Bleugh can stick that in his pipe and smoke it.

Oh and hats off to the father of the solder killed in action in Afghanistan who spurned Mr Blair at last weeks memorial service at St Paul's in memory of those killed in action in Afghanistan. When proffered his hand to shake , doubtless with that accompanying inane grin he perfected whilst in office, the father roared at him "How dare you offer your hand - it's covered in my son's blood" . What a hero.

I've just lost 4 days of my life....

... in bed with ( at the risk of sounding like a bloke ) flu.

If flu were an animal .... Swine flu would be about a 5 , a hamster would be about 1 , guinea pig 2 etc then this would be a whopping woolly mammoth , weighing in at number 10. Now I am sounding like a bloke. I'm not sure what it was but I never want it again. I'm not going to bore you with the details .

You can tell how delirious with fever I was .... I awoke from a nightmarish sweat on the Sunday night to see the Tin Tin Twins go through to the next round on X Factor - see how deluded I must have been ?

For any men reading this , what women want when they are ill is the following :

1. Occasional room service.... ie. an unsolicited cup of tea on  a tray maybe once or twice during the day.
2. Fresh bedlinen, volunteered with good grace, at some stage following 3 nights of sweating.
3. To have the children taken care of without having to worry about whether they being fed, loved and generally taken care of.

What we DON'T want is :

1. "I didn't bring you up a cup of tea because you didn't drink the last one"
2. " I suppose I'm going to have to change the sheets now you've been sweating in them "
3. To finally emerge after 3 days of fever to find the children still in their PJs in the afternoon having eaten their way through their own body weight in chocolate chip cookies having spent the last 
18 hours glued to the XBox.

X Factor

So who's watching then or rather who isn't ?

I reckon it's a one horse race. By rights Joe should win but knowing what a perverse bunch we Brits are, it'll probably end up being the Tin Tin Twins. Heaven help us.

I watched Cheryl Cole strut her stuff on the Sunday night and felt it somewhat ironic that she should have berated the ex pole dancers last week for coming on stage wanting to be taken seriously as professional singers but wearing scanty, boob revealing, peep show clothing. She appeared to be wanting us to take her new solo career as a Pop Princess seriously and yet ... she appeared to be wearing scanty, boob revealing, peep show clothing. Hmmm ..... people who love in glass houses etc. Still she's way too gorgeous for anyone to be cross with for very long and her closing words about the outrage of the Tin Tin Twins surviving made up for any clothing misdemeanors.

Was I the only one wondering who the balding, orange faced, geriatric 'Frank from Eastenders' lookalike sat next to Whitney was ? And yes I quite like some of Whitney's classic stuff but what's with all the Diva worship thing ? More evidence of our addiction to celebrity I suppose. The pop wannabes just wanna be famous. I wonder if they're born spouting all that drivel about only ever wanting to sing and not wanting to go back , wherever back is and living the dream and wanting it all so badly ? I don't think they really know what they want , they just want it now whatever ' it ' is.

Having said all of that I'm still hopelessly addicted and will be for the next goodness knows how many weeks. And isn't Dermot tiny or is everyone just wearing 8" platforms ?