Bugs on plants

It sounds like some kind of cocktail, doesn't it? Or a euphemism for something very exciting. In actual fact, I am just going to show you some pictures of bugs on plants. But stick with me on this one. They're good pictures, trust me. And they'll get me geared up for doing more walks again when the weather warms up...









































See? I told you to stick with me and it would be fun. It was fun, right?

Falling off my bike whilst moving at high speed

The first time I fell when moving fast, I was cycling along the side of the road through Brompton, on my way into London. I was in the cycle lane and there was a bit of a traffic jam. The cars were stationary but the cycle lane was clear so I was cycling quite fast. I was approaching a section of the road that had a Keep Clear sign, for cars to turn into a car park on my left. As I approached that section, I looked but nothing was turning so I kept cycling. All of a sudden, a big jeep thing swung quickly into the Keep Clear section and across my path into the car park. A millisecond before it would have hit me, I pulled on my brakes and skidded around so I was side on to the car. By the time it had disappeared into the car park, I had fallen sideways off the bike and skidded along the tarmac road, leaving the majority of my leg skin there. As this fall was post-cleats, the sudden pull of my body off the bike had been too fast for the shoes. I stood up, in my socks, and noticed that my cleats were still attached to the pedals on my bike! People rushed over, offering support and cursing the jeep driver. I stalked after him into the car park, in my socks, pushing my bike. I caught up with him and poked my head in the driver's side.

"Are you going to say sorry?" I demanded.

"What's wrong? Are you ok?" The man seemed worried.

"You just pulled in front of me and I had to brake really hard and I came off my bike."

"O god, sorry! I didn't see you."

"EXACTLY!" I said, self righteously.

"But I, I didn't see you."

"Thats not ok. That doesn't excuse you," I ranted. "Why weren't you bloody looking!?"

After a long rant, I mounted my bicycle, awkwardly because of the shoes on pedals and because I now realised that the seat had been shunted out of place, and flounced off, as best I could given the situation at hand.

The next time I fell off my bike whilst moving at speed was a similar situation. The cars were still at a set of traffic lights but the cycle lane was clear so I was cycling quite fast. A lazy mother was dropping her child off at school and instead of driving her into the school car park, she had obviously told her to jump out at the lights. The little girl, not looking of course, opened her car door just as I passed and almost knocked me out. I was thrown clean off my bike and onto the pavement. The edge of the door had ripped the skin between my little finger and ring finger apart and was bleeding all over. My arm felt broken and my leg had taken a bit of a pull in the wrong direction.

"What the fuck are you doing?!" I yelled at the little girl. In hindsight, this may not have been the best thing to say to a little girl.

Shell shocked, I struggled to my feet as the Mum came around from the drivers side and asked me if there was anything she could do.

"I think you've done enough!" I snapped, as I got on my bike and gingerly cycled away.

I had a bruise on my arm from shoulder to elbow which was deep purple and yellow and lasted for weeks. It wasn't broken but I couldn't really use it for the next two days.

Bloody kids.

Falling off my bike whilst barely moving

My first big fall happened whilst moving at almost no miles an hour, on a pavement, with no-one around. My friend Joe and I were cycling to his home in Reading so had just set off on our epic adventure early in the morning. My bike was newish and I was itching to give it a trial run on a long ride. I was having one of those monthly spacially unaware days (women, you know what I mean) and as I cycled around a little bollard thingy on the pavement at a dead end road with no cars or pedestrians, I just went a little too slowly to stay upright. Something about my spacial unawareness made me totally unable to cope with the situation at hand and I just wobbled slowly toward the bollard, crashed the front wheel sideways into it and fell on the ground. The brake was broken for the whole ride and I grazed my leg.

The next falls were all after I'd had different pedals fitted and had started wearing cleats, shoes that have little blocks on them which click into a space on your pedals. The fall I had whilst cycling in the busy centre of London was because I hadn't yet worked out how to get out of them while moving slowly uphill. It's harder than you think because of your weight being on them. So as I got to a red traffic light, I couldn't unclip and I fell, in front of the dozens of people waiting to cross the road and looking uncertainly at me to see if I'd stop and let them across. I was going no miles an hour. There were no cars. There was no almost-collision. I just went slower, slower, slower, right down to a halt, then fell off on to the ground. The handle bar turned sideways and stabbed me in the boob so I had a bruised boob for weeks afterward. And people really looked strangely at me. Someone hurried over and asked if I needed help but I just brushed her off, rather gruffly and stalked off, pushing the bike, mega embarrassed.

The next fall was similar to this. I was cycling slowly uphill so couldn't unclip and was cycling with a friend who had looked down to adjust his gears and drifted sideways into my path. I braked, a natural reaction to stop the inevitable crash. But I hadn't unclipped. So I fell in the opposite direction and really bashed up my legs, hitting the curb. My friend didn't even realise any of what had happened. He just looked down to change his gear then looked up and I'd fallen on the ground.

Another time I had a plastic bag with some stuff in but I had a new bike with very short handlebars. As I turned a corner, the bag swung into the spokes and stopped my wheel dead. I tried pushing down on the pedals to keep moving but I ground to a halt then fell sideways into the road. To onlookers it must have looked very stupid. I turned a corner, stopped, then crashed to the floor. Again, no-one was around, no cars, no pedestrians. Nothing had jumped into my path. I just fell on the ground.

Maybe this is why I am not the world famous sporting star you probably all expect I should be by now.

An imaginary conversation with the star of this week's Chat

Imagine the scene. You're at a pub, let's say, with some friends. It's one of those things where you're all sitting around, you're comfortably tipsy, people start name-dropping, you know the type of thing I mean. One person mentions their brush past a local politician ten years ago and soon everyone's at it.

"Well, yes, of course Brad Pitt's always around town now because he's bought that house down the road."

"O really? You know, I get the same thing when I serve Ian McKellan a coffee every morning. Yes. Didn't I mention? Yes, he gets a cappuccino, no chocolate."

"I totally saw Gary Barlow the other day on the train. I said hi to him. He seemed really lovely."

"Well, my cousin's mum's nan is Cilla Black so we're always seeing celebs. Yeh, totally."

And then.... The claim to beat all claims.... One of your gang pipes up with, "I was in Chat the other week."

Wowzers. Everyone is floored. What better claim to fame is there than that?!

"Amazing! What were you in it for?" you ask.

"O, I was the fat bloke on the front cover with a massive hangy fat section where my skin was all loose and stretchy."





"O. Ok. And what did you talk about in the story?"

"All about how I had low self confidence so I started to eat more and then I had no-one and nothing and thought 'what's the point' and hated myself and couldn't even look at myself in a mirror. My sister was in the story too, talking about how her boobs are just flaps of skin that she rolls up and puts inside her bra to try and make it look like proper boobs."





"Great. Uh. So what did you do about it? When you hated yourself and couldn't stand the sight of yourself and felt really self conscious?"

"O, I went straight to Chat, of course. I told them all about it and they printed a really super massive picture of me with no clothes on and told my story."





"Did that help?"

"I dunno. But that's not the point is it? The point is that Chat is always the place to go with all your woes. And also, now I'm famous. That's my life's work, right there. I am an achiever. I have done things and achieved things. I am The Chat Man."





"Good one.... *aside to other friend* your Cilla Black story was better."

And now imagine that that man is you. Imagine that's the single interesting thing you have done in your life. Depressing.

Crazy talk

Crosswords. What is with crosswords? Honestly. I remember a time when the most a crossword required from me was the answer to four down, "the colour of grass." O, clever me, I would think, whilst writing the word green into the little boxes. I am a genius, I would often also think, as I filled in the word 'Shrek,' the answer to the next clue. And so on and so forth. Until my fabulous little crossword in the back of the Bunty magazine was complete.

Yesterday evening, as I sat perusing my copy of the Royal Geographic Society magazine (cause that's the kind of girl I am), I found a crossword. Oo, exciting, I thought, reaching for a pen. I looked for a clue about a film actor or the capital of Russia and found the following....

"Contested subcontinental area - ask him about rebel's leader."

What. On. Earth. What was this drivel?! Had the crossword making man had a stroke whilst writing the crossword clues? This meant nothing to me. It was like alien talk or something. I read and reread the words. It was like someone had flipped through a dictionary and picked out words at random. It literally meant nothing to me.

I burst out laughing at the absurdity of it. There must be a problem here. Because I am a crossword demon and this clue means nothing to me. Therefore, the error is clearly in the crossword. It is the only explanation.

Danda looked over as I pointed and exclaimed.

"O yeh," he said. "Ask him about rebel's leader. It's an anagram. Yeh. An anagram of ask him. And about rebel's leader, that's an R. So an anagram of ask him and the letter R is Kashmir. The answer is Kashmir."

Ok, now I definitely know something fishy is going on. Who has organised this? This nonsense talk? Has this been set up like a candid camera show? It's an anagram of ask him and R?! Why? Why on EARTH is it an anagram of ask him and R?

He continued on with this nonsense talk for quite a while e.g. "Belgium ambassador holds venomous reptile!" was apparently "mamba" and the answer to "A social class in India discard English," was "caste." Because, obviously, obviously, it means the letter E when it says English.

Well, pardon me for thinking that the word English meant the word English.

I feel left out. It's like there was a class at school on crossword solving and I was off that day and have been left behind. I remember the good old days, when the clue was, "where you roast a chicken" and the answer was "oven." I was clever then. I was a crossword genius. Now I am a crossword dunce. I am the girl who's picked last at crossword practise. I shrug cluelessly when I am asked to help with "Abandon drainage channel" because it sounds like a load of crap someone just spouted for fun.

What is everyone talking about? Is there any hope for me?

Chit Chat

Ok, here it is. The long awaited next installment of Chat. In this latest offering, I'm going to concentrate on the Top Tips, which are absolutely phenomenal. Fasten your seatbelts because it's going to be a rollercoaster.

Ok, top tip number 1....



Store your special crockery in plastic bags, we are told. Just go and bloody do it, alright! Put your crockery, the special stuff, not the normal stuff, this is important. Put it in plastic bags. Why? you may ask. Well, isn't it obvious?! When you usually get the special crockery down to use and you give it a quick rinse before using it then dry it off and put it on the table, don't you ever think about how irritating that thirty second process is? O goodness, that was the longest thirty seconds EVER! I wish there was a way to cut down on that rinsing and drying time. Dah, dah! Chat to the rescue! By wrapping your special crockery in plastic bags, you will be able to unwrap it and use it straight away, without having to wash it first. Wow, what a revolutionary time-saving idea.

Next up, the non-flowering plant solution.



Ever had a plant which wouldn't flower? A cactus, perhaps? Ever had some artificial flowers hanging about the house, no longer of any use? Well, you can do what this woman has done and snip the heads off the flowers and simply glue them to the plants which are being naughty and not flowering! What a marvelous solution! The keen eyed among you will notice that this helpful reader has even glued some big plastic ladybirds to their naughty unflowering plant too. There's nothing I like to see better than a real cactus with artificial flowers and ladybirds glued all over it. Such beauty.

The next unbelievably good tip is as follows: "Drawer stuffed with tops that crease? Attach small hooks to your wardrobe door and hang them up." Now I'm not one to point out the obvious but, just this once, I think I'm going to speak up. Is this reader in fact suggesting to us that we attach small hooks to wardrobe doors to enable us to hang our tops from them by the straps? And is that, or is that not, the basic premise of a clothes hanger? Have they in fact suggested, a rudimentary clothes hanger-esque device which, actually, is less convenient as it is attached to the door, whereas a clothes hanger offers the versatility of being able to transport the top around, still hanging straight, to whatever destination the chooser should see fit? Is that what's happening here? The top tips section has given itself over to the ramblings of mental patients who's best offerings are rubbish versions of things that already exist?

I despair.

Thoughts

I'm having one of those I-can't-think-what-to-write-about days. Well, actually, I should qualify that statement. I'm having a bit of a lazy morning where I've spent an hour or two reading other blogs and listening to an audiobook so now my brain is in too many different places to think of something to write about. So I shall just list the thoughts that are in my mind right now.

- Will I ever become a world famous piano player? Or will I forever be stuck on the line, "And you come to me on a summer breeze" from How Deep Is Your Love? And are ten fingers enough to play this peice of music? At the moment, I need about twelve to be able to play it properly.

- Chocolate and cherry mousse cake is fabulous. And making a genoise sponge for the first time went ok. As did making custard from scratch...





- Beouf bourginon is not actually that difficult to make. It is also extremely tasty, despite its easiness...





- Planning an African adventure is muchos fun, even if it isn't going to happen for over a year...





- I can't cope with X Factor winner James Arthur's 'my-parents-divorced-when-I-was-a-kid-and-now-I'm-traumatised-for-life' routine. I just want to shake him and say, "Get over yourself! Grow up! I know your parents are divorced but SO ARE EVERYONE ELSE'S!" He writes songs about it which are really 'deep' apparently. So his Mum says. "Yeah," she goes, serious face on and eyes looking down to the ground. "It's really... It's really... (she searches for the appropriate word, having used deep about four times already)... It's really... deep." Thanks for that, o mother of great eloquence and feeling. It's good to know that, as a man in his 20s, the single most important that has happened in his life is still the separation of his parents when he was in primary school. Sometimes, Mr Arthur, people are better apart. Get over it.

- My rooibos tea has gone cold.

- There is a cat digging in the garden. I didn't know cats dug.

- I am really intrigued about what happened with Oscar Pistorius and his girlfriend. I genuinely really like him. I just finished reading his autobiography, Blade Runner, a few weeks ago and it was really good. He seems like a down-to-earth, decent type. And a brilliant athlete. His arrest for murder seems totally at odds with the man I imagined him to be. Of course, a book written by him will obviously give the impression that he portrays, not necessarily who he actually is. And by the same token, a charge for murder is not a conclusion of guilt. There's this space in between the law and the media and the person's own voice, where they reside, and I don't suppose I can know who he is or what has happened. I guess we will see what the outcome is.

- Today I am going for lunch with a friend I haven't seen in way too long. I am excited.