Loved stuff: My garden

I really love being in our garden here is the wilds of Cricklewood, London. The garden was actually the main draw when we bought the flat.

Previously I had lived in a much smarter part of town, in a much bigger flat. The problem was that it was top floor with no outside space. I lived there for six years and kidded myself that no garden = no problem. Anyway thankfully I wised up and when Chad and I moved in together and got the new place, getting a garden was top of the list.

As the weather was great last weekend and summer has arrived in London we did a big tidy up in the garden: pressure washing the decking, putting in new plants, moving unhealthy looking plants to spots where they might do better etc.

The weather is glorious again this morning, so here are a few snaps that I took this morning...

Gorgeous allium in bloom:

Shiny disco balls:
The garden shed that cost way too much:

Anti-Grumped: B&Q redemption...

I posted recently about the B&Q glue disaster.

My follow-up on this is that the glue washed out of my clothes and my beloved Armani jacket came out of ‘Paradise’ with the glue removed. I took my dry cleaning bill back to B&Q. The nice duty manager from before was there. He looked relieved that he didn't have to pay for a new jacket and gave me the dry cleaning money plus a card to get 10% my shopping.

So I stocked up on plants for the garden (all now planted).

So not a bad outcome from the Orange DIY establishment in the end then.

Crumptales: Taking flight

I have lost count of the number of flights that I taken in my life. For the last ten years I have spent loads of time on planes travelling all over the place for work – I have been to some amazing places as a result.

I was actually quite late to taking flight. The first time I went on a plane I was about ten on a family holiday to Greece (up until then we had always been on holiday to France in the car – three children in the back of a BMW – you can imagine the bickering that went on. Poor Mum and Dad!)

There are two great stories from that first flight...

STORY ONE: My sister Elaine (about nine years old at the time) and I boarded the flight with huge excitement and settled into our seats. We were fascinated by all the magazines, safety information card and I remember wanting to keep the sick bag as a memento. As the plane was at the start of the runway about to take off, Elaine turns to me and said really loudly “I thought airhostesses were meant to be pretty”.

A second later there was a loud cough from behind us. We both turn to look through the gap between the seats to see an airhostess in the jump seat glaring back at us! We then look at Mum who is across the aisle and giving us the famous death stare. Oh Lordy.

As if that wasn’t enough...

STORY TWO: Involves just little ten year old me. Half way through the flight I need to go to the loo. I had been watching everyone intently during the flight to try and work out the queuing protocol. So I had this sussed and I asked Mum for permission and she said “off you go then”. I waited for my turn in line.

On entering the cubicle I was totally fascinated by all the little compartments for the tissues, loo roll, bin etc. I even had a squirt of the hand cream. While settling down on the loo seat I spied this long red cord, that looked like a bathroom light pull. I was looking at it thinking “I wonder what that does?” So as any curious self-respecting ten year old sat on the loo would do I gave the cord a good hard yank. Disappointingly nothing happened for at least 15 seconds, but then all hell broke loose.

There was a pounding hand on the toilet door and cries of “are you OK in there?” I was frozen solid unable to move or speak. About five seconds later the door was flung open and there stood before me was none other than the ‘ugly’ airhostess, with about five passengers standing behind her all trying to get a view of the ‘emergency’ taking place. I still couldn’t speak at this point and the airhostess kindly closed the door with a sneer on her face.

I think I stayed in the loo for only a minute or so more – it felt like hours though. I finally plucked up the courage and exited the cubicle (having had another squirt of hand cream for good measure). It was the walk of shame back to my seat – everyone was looking at me and sniggering – I was so mortified. Elaine thought that the whole thing was hilarious and spent the rest of the flight carping at me – making that tuneful “wah, wah, wah, warrrrrrhhhh!” noise.

Anyway, I wasn’t put off flying and as a university student I actually worked at Gatwick airport during my ‘holidays’ as a passenger service agent or a PSA as were known (EVERYTHING to do with airports has a three letter acronym). So while flying is not always as eventful as that first flight, I do find the whole thing interesting having experienced airports from both sides of the fence.

This post has made me remember loads of hilarious working at the airport stories. I’m gonna write these up in the future. My prompts for these future posts are:

• Stage fright / first plane boarding announcement
• Two Americans / four tickets
• Waving in a flight
• The sweaty lady / foundation issue
• Italians / boarding by seat row number (or not!)
• The Adams Family goes on holiday to Bulgaria
• The Rastafarian and the hat
• Friend / carbon copy tickets / rude word / dismissal
• Old Indian lady / her patient six hour wait
• Family on the wrong coach with the England cricket team

PS: The ugly airhostess actually wasn’t that ugly – she just had really bad pink, blue AND orange eye shadow caked on her lids
PPS: Let’s not discuss my carbon footprint on the flying front – that would be too terrifying to consider

Word from nowhere: Juxtapose

This is going to be a new section to my blog: words that I have said for the first time.

Today I used the word 'juxtapose' in a team meeting.

Not sure where that came from - pretentious, moi... N x

Oh here's another word - insomnia!!! I cannot sleep but I can hear Chad and both cats snoring!!!

Grumped: Cartier watches

A few years ago when I was employed by someone else to run their agency (rather than run my own) and I was earning too much money (ergo: I don’t earn loads now!!!), I made a very frivolous purchase.

That purchase was a Cartier watch - it cost several thousand pounds. The thrill of buying it was amazing and it came in the BIGGEST box that you have ever seen (about 30 cm by 30 cm by 20 cm) to house a watch. But the box did come with two straps (a metal one and a leather one) plus an all important lifetime guarantee – which I was told by the jewellers to keep safe and they did all the necessary stamping to it to prove purchase etc.

I have to say that I really loved that watch and wore it every day for more than five years. Now a while back it started to lose time and making a weird clucking noise. So I hocked out the lifetime guarantee from the aforementioned box and took it back to the jewellers. They filled out all the paperwork, keeping the lifetime guarantee documentation and I paid the £20 charge to get the watch sent off to Cartier. I got a call from the jewellers about two weeks later telling me to come and pick up my watch. So in I go to collect it. On arrival and I am informed that Cartier has said that they cannot mend the watch under the lifetime guarantee because they believe the watch has been ‘knocked’.

Now first of all I cannot recall the fateful knock – but the chances are that a watch is going to get ‘knocked’. For hell’s sake it’s a watch that has wrapped around my left wrist for five years. Secondly, and this is the bit that really annoyed me, Cartier said that for £300 they could service the watch and that they felt that would fix the problem!!!

There is no way that I am going to pay Cartier another £300 to get that watch fixed. I am not sure if I am cutting off my nose to spite my face here but I am really cross about the principle that I made this purchase with a belief in a globally renown luxury brand’s lifetime guarantee.

I have read the small print of the guarantee and it really does turn out to be a worthless piece of paper with ‘get out’ after ‘get out’ clause. I have tried to search the Internet to see if other people share my frustration – but you cannot find anything as Google searches just bring up thousands of pages selling either fake or second hand Cartier watches.

With hindsight I look back on the Cartier purchase as something actually embarrassing. In these current credit crunch times, as us Westerners feel a bit squeezed and our charitable donations have declined, there are millions of people around the world who are suffering as a result. That watch now symbolises something a bit obscene and what is wrong with the world in which we all lived a few years back...

• That I felt the need to demonstrate my worth by buying into the luxury myth - a watch shouldn’t cost thousands of pounds – it’s just plain dumb
• Big brands, such as banks and those purporting to be luxury are in many instances just hollow worthless shells – they have no substance or care for their customers and make them feel like duped fools

I am not a tree hugger (although I am sure that an embrace of a three hundred year old oak tree might help us put our small periods on this planet in perspective), however I do hope that as we all come out of this recession that we can individually and collectively wise up. That we recognise what is valuable, solid and worthy of our attention and investment.

Boy this post opened up a can of worms!

I feel sorry for houseplants

...I really do. They have such terrible lives of neglect and suffering. Nearly all my friends, family and work buddies are hopeless at looking after them. Now I am no Alan Titchmarch, but I am able to keep a plant alive and it is really simple. Here are my (insightful!) top tips:

• Plants need light (some want direct light and some don’t). So that means (Hena) that a plant is not going to thrive in a room where the curtains are permanently closed


• Plants need water. Not loads of water (or tea dregs – you know who you are!) where they end up having their poor roots suffocate. Plants roots (other than aquatic plants) need air in the soil so that can actually draw up water


• Plants need food. Not all the time but every so often. Baby Bio is my plant food of choice

My favourite houseplant is the Peace Lilly (Spathiphyllum wallisii). Here is my pride and joy (I've had it for more than 10 years):

It is ace and easy to look after and blesses you every so often with lovely white flowers. The great thing about this plant is that it is really hard to kill. So when you get back to work, after two weeks of annual leave, and your Peace Lilly hasn’t been watered (by people that promised they would) and the leaves are actually lying on the desk – you simply give it a water and hey presto a day later the leaves are all perky and healthy looking.

It’s a fighter – it needs to be ‘cause it’s a tough world out there.

Loved stuff: Burgers

I read a great article in USA Today on a flight back from a meeting in Germany. The basis story was that President Obama did a dash out the White House (followed by huge troupe of press) to grab a burger for lunch. It was a most amusing little story, very human and West Wing like.

I'm so pleased that Mr President is partial to a burger because I love them - it really is one of my most favourite things to eat. Even in a smart restaurant I will often opt for burger heaven. Anyway I'm not going to bleat on (I have had about five hours sleep the last two nights and I need to crawl into the sack) in this post, but I really do like the burger.

PS: One of the best burgers in London is served a one minute walk away from my office at the Camden Bar and Kitchen. The burger is homemade and it is totally delicious.

Loved stuff: Our Springle McDingles...

The Spingles are on sparkling form tonight. We've been at work today but my guess is that they have been sunbathing all day in the garden and now full of beans as a result. Sophie keeps running in and out of the room like she is on a yo yo. Even Tiggy (aka Fat Mama) is hyper mobile tonight.

I realised today that I hadn't posted any pictures of the beloved moggies on here, so may I introduce them...

Tiggy:

Note: confident gaze

Sophie:














Note: nervous gaze

Stress monkey management

The genes we inherit help determine whether we have a cool head or a short fuse, scientists have found, according to The Daily Mail. Now I haven’t looked into this study in any great detail (I haven’t hunted out the original scientific paper), but I am a bit sceptical, based on stuff I have read in the past. The bottom line is that it is highly unlikely that a single gene could be assigned this attribute.

It does make sense that the way we react to a given stimulus might (among a load of factors) be down to how much our bodies releases neurotransmitters such as serotonin or dopamine (which ultimately comes from our genes), and maybe we end up a bit predisposed based on our genetic make-up. But at the end of the day I think that we choose how we react to a stimulus and most of the time this, I believe, is about conditioning and habits formed over time. Therefore it is possible, to relearn how you react to a given situation.

Now I’m not saying that it is easy to break an old habit like getting really angry and fly off the handle. But based on the fact that there are loads of studies that show that being angry is bad for your health it has got to be worth doing.People that know me well will know that at times I can be a stress monkey and can let things get on top of me. I do know how to channel this negative energy and not end up in stress hell – but I sometimes fail to enact the necessary thinking (because that is all I have to do) to deal with stress properly – which in turn has a rolling stone effect and just makes me feel more stressed.

Us humans are complicated wotsits, we spend too much on negative stuff and forget how fortunate we are. So this post is for you Crump. Remember it.

Loved stuff: Kirstie Allsopp

I love Kirstie Allsopp and I am really excited about her shift from property guru into homemaker extraordinaire. I hope that this is a new track for her. We need a British 'Martha Stewart'.

She has a new show called 'Kirstie's Homemade Home' and I just love it. It's my perfect TV programme: property, interior design, arts and crafts and a splash of shopping plus The Allsopp. She has been making stuff for a property she has done up in Devon - I am really jealous as she has got to do glass blowing and a whole load of other things that I also want to do. I have been inspired by The Allsopp and intend to up my arts and crafting quota in 2009.

She is a wonder and I just love her, according to the Wikipedia entry on her (as a result of her family's peerage) she can be referred to as The Honourable Kirstie Allsopp - how fab and I couldn't agree more. She also gets to work with Phil Spencer (lucky lucky lady).

I don't think that she has a website or blog of her own - she definitely should.

Loved stuff: Whiskers on kittens...

...are, like the lovely Julie Andrews sang, one of my favourite things.

We are staying at Rob and Sarah's this weekend. They have a new edition to their family. She is called Jasmine and is so cute. She likes to sit on your shoulders and fall asleep. So adorable - I'm in love.