Oh pants!!

I had a bad mothering day yesterday. I am a little distracted and down at the minute and my precious little angel has decided to throw me one curveball after the other. Attachment to my hip, refusal to go to bed , refusal to sleep in said bed , basically a lot of refusal, NO MUMMY, NOOOOOOOOOO.

So I thought it would be great if we could go out somewhere different for the day. We went to diidi dancig first which was fun as usual and then I had planned a trip to canary wharf on the train and DLR (docklands light railway ) I thought it would be fun as its kind of like a ride. We planned to meet Sandi at canary wharf and have lunch.
Lily is a bit snotty at the minute though so I gave her some medicine which knocked her out totally. she missed the DLR and all of my energetic humpfing of the pram up and down stairs.
I had a great lunch without her with Sandi and she slept and slept. Obviously she also wee'ed and weeed ( or is it weed???)
on the trip home in the dlr she got out of her buggy and everything was soaked through. Oh geez I thought and make the decision to get home quickly as there is no baby change and everyone was looking at us.
So I made the poor child walk up some stairs to the correct platform but as we reached the top I heard a little voice " mummy, we have a problem" "pants"
I turned to see lily with her pants and her nappy around her ankles in the freezing weather, naked on the lewisham train station platform 3.
I felt awful , I ran to her took everything off under my pashmina and swathed her in that and sat her on my lap until the train came. she ,of course ,was fighting me every step of the way cue "NOOOOOO MUMMMMMYYYYYY"
We then walked home in a torrent of rain and arrived soaked and naked (for Lily) at our house.
yes it was a bad mothering day indeed.

Today is halloween and our bats are hanging in our window. I have a little bowl of sweets at the door. Kristian and lily will be there for that much to my disgust as i am working tonight. I am sure it will be fun. Halloween is such a huge thing now. Its really grown and there is so much halloween stuff about this year. It reminds me how fast things have changed . Not that long ago Veronica (purple Ronnie) spent many an hour making up little bags of sweets for the trick or treaters that were going to come to her brand new house. her face was all sparkly and excited. we waited for the doorbell to ring for hours. but nothing... nada
So we ate all the sweets ourselves . good times
have a good halloween whatever you are doing

happy birthday

Happy Birthday to Andrew, my little brother. He is 26 today. We gave him a helicopter flight over Cape Town with all sorts of fun military type stuff thrown in that he will love I am sure.

He is one of those cusp people. just leaving Libra and entering Scorpio. I love cusp people as they are so unpredictable I think. you never quite know how they will react and you cant pin them down to any personality traits per se( in my humble opinion) (PS please remind me never to say in my humble opinion again in light of my new surname)

today he was pure Libra when I chatted to him on skype but all could change tomorrow , you just never know

anyhow , happy birthday Drew , Ands , Andrew

hope you have a lovely day and wish we could be there

xxx

sisters unite

the ultra organised and brilliant Lailaa has created a blog for our dinner club , London. the sister of the delicious divas dinner club.
We are , of course , the gourmet goddesses http://www.gourmetgoddesses.blogspot.com/
We have a fabulous restaurant coming up, the sister restaurant of pasha (Caroline's favorite) so keep watching.... ooh and add us to your links if you so wish

food glorious food

Here's a recipe for you all to try. Its filling , its veggie and its delicious. Its not low fat , but its not too bad either.
My mum made it when I was home now and I just love it
So you need
1 whole bag of spinach
1 whole butternut , peeled and diced
1 tub of cream (full or half fat )
1 sachet of white onion soup.
(heres where I fall down as they don't do that here , but I stockpiled a few. I hear that the french onion works well that you can get in England. As for Canada and America it's anyones guess.)

so you lay the butternut at the bottom of a dish
you put the spinach on top of that
beat the soup into the cream and drizzle all over the top of the spinach making it look truly revolting,
then you cover in foil and bake for about half an hour or until butternut is tender
mix it altogether
its divine with fish or chicken or by itself.
Enjoy!

catch up

So its been a busy old week here since I last posted. On Wednesday we had our first London Dinner club which was a great success. Everyone got on like a house on fire. We shared a bottle of savignon blanc in a nearby theatre as London was absolutely buzzing last Wednesday due to lovely weather and we had to wait for our table. It was great to get everyone chatting and by the time we sat at our table at Strada we were cackling much better.

The food there is very nice Italian fare. you cant go wrong with an Italian ;) I had some lovely parpedelle with gorgonzola and pancetta and yet more wine.

We all went our separate ways to catch trains home. what a difference to the cape town dinner club where we all catch a lift. It i fun though. Jenny and I headed off to Waterloo east as my train goes straight from there. she has to change at London Bridge. What occurred after this had my bladder bursting as Jenny in a frantic attempt to get the soonest train possible proceeded to run from my platform to the opposite one missing 3 trains before she eventually got on the same train as me. All that wine and slight tipsyness sent me into an intense laughing fit which continued for about an hour.

We are all so excited for our next dinner club.. will keep you posted

On Friday We had a busy day and were up early making our way to Ashford where a friend I made in baby group now lives. our daughters are 3 days apart. We had a bit of lunch and a play and it was great to catch up and see her new home. I then roared back down the M20 back to Lee where Kristian was waiting for me and we started off on our way to Bournemouth at 4pm on a Friday. You may ask what possessed us , but my only excuse is that I have been away for a while and the memory of English traffic had dulled and left me mildly optimistic of our chances

But the M25 had other plans and we sat there for an our arriving in Bournemouth 4 hours later.

Stress!!!

The weekend was good though. Michele made us steaks which cured my longing for meat. Kristian had a tuna steak. We went out to Bournemouth on the Saturday and had some chips on the beach and then caught this little train from Bournemouth beach to Boscombe Pier which is the next pier along. great fun.

lily was spoilt and got a lovely pair of patent leather shoes for the winter as well as some new long boots that are to die for.

Sunday we had a lovely lunch with Kristian's grandad ,lily's great dad dad , at the Avon causeway hotel.

So all in all a busy few days. I am trying to get some motivation going at the moment. I am eating healthily again after putting on a wee bit of weight and am trying to get out and about more. I start work on Saturday and am quite looking forward to it. so life trundles on...

PS. only 2 more months till Christmas!!!!

Some photos to accompany my story...

The dinner club from left Lailaa, Sandi, Wendy, Jennythe girls outside stradaLily in Ashford playing in Ami's little carThe trainLily on the train at bournemouth beach frontLily in her new bed at Choo Choo nanas house in the night garden

its autumn in BlackheathLily playing dough yesterday looking like an extra in the flintstones

Happy birthday

On Saturday night Kristian and I had a rare night out. And what a night it was! Our dear friend Leila turned 21.

Leila and my brother , Andrew , started going out 6 years ago. They have since split up (sniff sniff) but we all remain very good friends. She is a breath of fresh air, always happy and enthusiastic which is quite a rare thing these days.

She has recently moved to London to pursue her acting career here after she left one of our local soapies. shes a fabulous actress and we are so proud of her.

we went to Fakheldine, a Lebanese restaurant on Piccadilly, Mayfair. Right opposite the Ritz it was, overlooking Green park. There was even a belly dancer who asked me to dance with her. I politely refused but was internally shuddering at the thought of shaking my baby belly next to this perfect human specimen. We had mezze platters and wine (too much). Then we had the journey home on the tube and train. We got the last train of the night. It was not pretty!!!

Here's the birthday girl in all her glory AKA surrounded by cakes. whilst we are on the subject of cakes , these cup cakes are called red velvet. the cake is like a red chocolate. when I tell you I nearly I had a near death experience when I tasted them I am not joking. I am doing serious googling to find a recipe

I went and got myself...

A job. It's only a little one on a Saturday with some overtime hours here and there. I am going to be working for my old company , Jones Bootmakers. Its dangerous with my shoe obsession but hey ho.
I think it will be good for me to get out a bit and earn some money to plunge into our savings.
So there we go ,my news of the morning.
I am however a little worried as my feet are so sore after going to the interview in my heels. I think I may be wearing my crocs a little too much.

who are you?

I have no idea who reads this blog. I have this friend. He does not seem like a person who would be an avid blog reader yet , He knows all about my life and all of you other bloggers too :). He said to me that he has an insight into my life that I will never have to his.
We had a great conversation about the joys and pitfalls of blogging in the modern world.

It just set me thinking about who reads blogs. Theres been a lot of conversation about who starts and writes a blog and what they say ,but why do you read? and why don't some of you comment.. Ever? Do you like the anonymity of it all? I know I do ,with some of my blog reading. I recently went to a blog I have read for over a year but she has no idea I read it. she had put a block on it for invited people only. I was distraught. It was like a friend had been lost.

It seems our readership is varied but what we think is our mundane life is actually very interesting to all sorts of people. who would have thunk it!

It has been commented that this is a great experiment into blogging and social interaction in the world today. I agree with that totally.
So just for today , Just for me who writes to all of you every week. chime in, say Hi. I wont bite. ( only if I was a vampire - I wish!)

dinner club London

Do you all know the delicious Divas? If you read my blog or a couple of my friendly bloggers blogs, you will know that its a group of crazy ladies that started a dinner club. they frequent fabulous restaurants in Cape Town and surrounds. have great food , good wine and a good time. They allow me to join when I am in Cape Town. an honorary member if you like.

I love going , besides the fact that food is a very important part of my life the female company lifts my spirits.
Sometimes my spirits flag here in London. It can be an isolating place as people live far away from each other and life is very busy and fast paced. I need that spirit lifting.
So I decided that a dinner club in London would be just the thing. I contacted a few friends who live in the surrounds of London and voila.. dinner club London. our first dinner is on the south bank just near the London eye. we will watch the Thames float by as we have pasta and wine at Strada .

We are a mix of ages and career. Some in our 20s ,some in our 30s, some in our 40s and one 21 year old! One works in a restaurant but is an actress. One works for a posh clothing company and is making her life in London , one does something that I really must find out more about because I don't know but she lives in a beautiful apartment in Canary wharf and works in the city ( sorry Lailaa - pinkys pages) One works in HR in canary wharf and lives In Oxhey village near Watford ad one is a stay at home mum...
Should be interesting.. I am looking for more members so If you read this , live in London , are not a psycho and want to join in, give me a bell.