SAVING ENERGY

I'm absolutely determined not to give the greedy fuel companies any more of our hard-earned money (Whoever is responsible for British Gas's PR, needs the push. Fancy announcing huge profits the day after telling us that fuel prices are going up by 30%) so I Googled "saving energy" and  eventually came to a site that told me to put my computer into hibernation when I wasn't using it. This has had two immediate effects. It raises my blood pressure every time I come to check my emails and find my computer asleep but to balance that out, it makes me do other things. This morning (6.30am) when I found the screen snoozing yet again, I decided to go and read a book instead of spending time surfing the net. This was very calming and amusing (Virginia Ironside - No I Don't Want To Join A Book Club - I can recommend it, especially if you're nearing 60) and in between reading I looked up and saw blue sky and the sun shining on the garden.

 

This is the life and I'm so glad I've kicked rude men with dirty doors into touch (see earlier entry). They're welcome to their aggression. Now I'm off to the dentist's.

A MYSTERY JOB

Last night I set up a business. Today I've closed it. It was a local mystery shopping company called something-or-other - not really called something-or-other, it's just that I can't remember what I'd decided to call it. I couldn't sleep for excitement last night - I'd contacted a garden centre about my venture and a director rang me, she was on for 40 minutes and wanted my views and was very enthusiastic. So far so good with my new enterprise. Then this morning I got a nasty email from a local businessman saying that I was obviously very busy trying to tell other people how to run their businesses (because I'd pointed out that his glass doors were dirty). How rude. That settled it. Unless I absolutely have to come into contact with people like that, I'd rather not. So my money-making scheme has bitten the dust at the first hurdle - if that's not mixing metaphores.

Then at lunchtime we went and did a mystery dine in Liverpool (on a train packed with screaming kids) and it took an hour and a half to get one course. The form asked me to say what the atmosphere was like. "Tense" was the only polite descriptive word I could come up with.

DINING AL FRESCO

What a gloriously hot and sunny day - hurray. To celebrate summer we decided to christen our new patio set and eat outside. Whenever we watch travel programmes on the box we see whole Italian families eating outside at long tables - it all looks so placid, unrushed and relaxing. Whereas with us it's a half-day's work to sort the umbrella out. The advert for the patio set stated that the price included a market-sized umbrella. This sounded great - bigger surely meant better. Not always. It took three people to lift it and screw it into place and before we could wind the umbrella up, my husband had to get our biggest set of ladders out, climb to the top and wield a brush to poke the protective cover until it fell off. By that time everyone's nerves were shattered and our al-fresco meal stuck in the gullet. We haven't yet worked out how the cover is going to be put back on.

THE ORANG UTANS

This is one of the London son's videos from his Malaysian holiday

NO GEORGE CLOONEY - IT'S OFFICIAL.

Aaaaaaarrrrrgghhhh! It was quite a novelty when the hits on this website increased one hundred fold because people were Googling "George Clooney at the Open" and arriving here. BUT THE NOVELTY HAS NOW WORN OFF. So let me inform you once and for all that the man was never here - it was all made up by the press. In fact he was in Italy during the golf. And reports that Pierce Brosnan, Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas were all knocking back pints in our local were also a load of rubbish. So by all means come to my blog but only if you want to read the mundane ramblings of a mad woman - not if you want to read about celebrities who weren't at the Open Golf.

CROWN MATRIMONIAL

Patricia Routledge MUST have been Queen Mary in a past life. The resemblance was uncanny when we saw her last night in Crown Matrimonial at The Lowry. She's brilliant of course and how she remembers all those lines I just can't imagine. We used the Tom Tom to get there and when the lady in the box gave instructions such as "turn left then take the first exit at the roundabout" - no sooner had she uttered the words than I'd completely forgotten what she'd said. So my idea of hell would be to have to learn lines. Patricia Routledge reminds me of the best teachers we had at school - spinsters who devoted themselves to their work - do they still exist?

 

I felt as though we were part of an Alan Bennett production while we were waiting for the play to start. Four elderly ladies with broad Lancashire accents were in the seats behind. We learnt all about their hatred of the dark, how one carries a torch with her to the theatre and how another had a panic attack when she went to a monkey show and the lights went out. "Ooh yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Ooh No no no no no - well, they'd have to put me out," is a snippet from the conversation. My husband, whose banter is almost non-existent,  seems to take delight in mimicking people in theatres. And I suddenly heard him shout: "YES, YES, YES" out of the blue. Then when we were on the terrace at the interval listening to other people laughing and enjoying themselves, he gave such a loud, hearty laugh at nothing at all that I'm thinking of enrolling him in the local amateur dramatic society.

THIS IS A GOOD THING

The artist son has a new website  which seems to have taken off. I already keep abreast of all his exhibitions and publications via his other two sites  - now that there's a third, I can see I'll have to pencil in a regular diary slot.