Sick and Wrong? Or bloody fabulous?!

Remember my mentioning a recent penchant for aprons whilst baking? Well.... have a blinking look at this bad boy.

Now, that is the kind of baking apparel I can get on board with. In fact, the whole damn selection is mighty fine. Good old Anthropologie.

Twenties Girl

Like The Undomestic Goddess, Can You Keep a Secret? and Remember Me?, Twenties Girl is not a Sophie Kinsella Shopaholic title...it tells the story of Lara and her great-aunt Sadie Lancaster and the search for a missing dragonfly necklace.

It's a completely daft story till about page 341 - and I wasn't all together sure whether I would ever really care enough, but then it all hots up, and things fall into place, and character become real, and emotions so raw - that by the time the big reveal plays out on page 391 I had my heart in my throat and a tear down my cheek pretty much till the end.

It's not my favourite ever Kinsella book, but keep going and you too will be thinking of your old relatives in a whole new light.

Lovely Lille

To celebrate The Mother’s 67th birthday, The Sister and I booked a good old Eurotart trip this weekend and stayed here at The Hermitage Gantois Hotel in Lille which must be the grandest place I’ve ever spent a night…

Built around 1460, the beautifully renovated building was once a Hospice, and original features abound. One of the four original courtyards has been turned inside out to form the most amazing glass roofed bar with more pale blue leather sofa’s than I have ever seen in one place before – and the 67 bedrooms (some of which were the former nun’s cells and still bear their saintly names!) are all individually designed with Philippe Starck chairs and Louis XV oak panelling….

Lille itself is the little known home of pasteurisation and Charles de Gaulle with lovely cobbled streets and squares that can easily be investigated in one day – with some gorgeous architecture nestled in between the usual commercial buildings and council estates that most European city centres seem to offer.

Dizzy

There are models in the office. Yes models. Not hand models. Not character models. Not fetish models. Bona fide beautiful, fit, tall, gorgeous ladies and gentleman parading around the corridors of doom leading down to MR1 – normally reserved for the very dullest of long meetings, today, the location for topless Polaroid shots of the most pristine flesh you have ever seen…

There are herds I tell you. Herds of them in and out, in and out. An open casting for a running book we are doing later in the year has resulted in 2Two2 becoming like something HBO would screen – and I would pay money to see.

If you happen to be up the big smoke, and in need of a perv over some fine young men, get yourself to my office. It’s continuing for the next few hours. HOURS!! My blood pressure is already through the roof, how the fuck am I supposed to concentrate on margin spreadsheets with all this low slung jean and ripped chest business going on around me….

Oh, what a lovely day.

Tonic

I swear, this Birthday Lunch Club is a fail safe method to lighten the load...long live my female islands of sanity in a sea of bullshit.

Happy Birthday Lorrie, you beautiful thing you...

Back in October 2006 I spent a lovely few hours drinking tea and eating cake with Lisa Jewell. I had long been a fan – since reading Ralph’s Party (her debut) seven years earlier, so was over-the-moon-delighted that as part of my job at The Big W I got to interview her for the Chick Lit Reading Group project. Ah, happy days....

Friday morning I finished her latest book (I know, I know, I’m very late to the party…) The Truth About Melody Browne, and OH MY GOD. Nothing girly about it. Nothing chicklitty about it. Nothing cheesy or pink or girl-meets-boy-and-fucks-it-up, about it. Here’s the blurb from the back, cause it explains it all far better than I can...

“When she was nine years old, Melody Browne’s house burned down, taking every toy, every photograph, every item of clothing and old Christmas card with it. But not only did the fire destroy all her possessions, it took with it all her memories – Melody Browne can remember nothing before her ninth birthday. Now in her early thirties, Melody lives in a council flat in the middle of London with her seventeen-year-old son. She hasn’t seen her parents since she left home at fifteen, but Melody doesn’t mind, she’s better off on her own. She’s made a good life for herself and her son and she likes it that way. Until one night something extraordinary happens. Whilst attending a hypnotist show with her first date in years she faints – and when she comes round she starts to remember. At first her memories mean nothing to her but then slowly, day by day, she begins to piece together the real story of her childhood. Her journey takes her to the seaside town of Broadstairs, to oddly familiar houses in London backstreets and to meetings with strangers who love her like their own. But with every mystery she solves another one materialises, with every question she answers another appears. And Melody begins to wonder if she’ll ever know the truth about her past…”

As you know, I'm not a girly girl...

I fail miserably at accessorising. I don't wear perfume. I can't walk in heels. I don't go gaga over babies. Or kittens. Or puppies. I don't understand all this Twilight vampire lust hoo-haa. I don't yearn for Cath Kidston. Or Orla Kiely. I don't light candles in the bath. Or in the bedroom. I don't wear lipgloss. Or lipbalm. I don't wear lingerie, I wear pants. I can just about spell chignon, let alone know how to do one....

BUT.

I have become addicted to wearing my apron whilst baking.

AND.

It's the worse looking apron you've ever seen. White cotton. Map of Cyprus. Hideous.

Any answers?