So it’s almost Christmas and over the last few months, my side business has really gone crazy and I’ve been rushed off my feet and working two full time jobs, or at least it feels that way. [*Yes, my side gig got in the way again and I started this post before Christmas and got side tracked*] Obviously when you have paying customers (which has been quite rare in the past, to be honest), you can’t let them down at the last minute, so my own home life has been put on the back burner.  Needless to say, I have not yet got around to sending Christmas cards.  Ooopsie, and sorry to all my ..read more

If you’ve ever read any of this blog, you will know that I actually quite like a tipple every now and then.  Not that I’m always drinking, mind you.  But when I do…..well....  [that sounds a bit bad really, doesn’t it?] Aside from that, I also have a bit of a problem with glasses.  No, not eye glasses, but any funky, cute or original kind of drink glass.  I probably shouldn’t be admitting this, but if you serve me a drink in a lovely glass, you will most likely not get it back.  It will be in my bag and end up in my kitchen cupboard.  I love those tiny littl ..read more

It was 1994, it was August and it was one million degrees (which may be a slight exaggeration, but not much).  I don’t think you could get more of a difference in landscapes between south London and the southern California high desert.  Summer in London - probably either miserably hot and humid (low 70’s) or raining.  Summer in southern California - dry, extremely hot (low 100’s) and very dusty. But it wasn’t only the weather that was different.  It was the whole lifestyle.  There wasn’t (and still isn’t) any public transportation whatsoever so we had to drive everywh ..read more

In a couple of months, we're going on a cruise and as you do, I looked in the mirror the other day and thought “Blimey, I need to go on a diet!”  I’m not sure I actually do, but I feel and look heavier than I feel comfortable with.  Probably because of married bliss and eating a lot of chocolate, to be honest. Anyway, I decided I needed to do something that wasn’t Weight Watchers because quite honestly, I don’t want to pay to diet.  It’s bad enough starving yourself, let alone paying for the privilege. After doing my research (i.e. scrolling through Facebook) one diet in parti ..read more

There’s always that moment and awkward conversation when I meet someone from England.  This is how it usually goes: “Hello, how are you? Fine thanks, and you? ……[Awkwardness]…. So, how long have you been here? …… 2, 4, 10, 15, 20… etc years …..           What part of England are you from?   ….Doncaster… Rugby… Milton Keynes… Brighton…. [Pretty much anywhere in the country that I’ve either never been or is no where near anywhere I’ve ever lived.] Oh, okay ….. [More awkwardness]  …. What brought you here then? [Insert any number of reasons…] .. cri ..read more

The school summer holidays, six whole weeks of doing nothing and going back to school seemed ages away.  What a great feeling that was and what made it even better was when your mum and dad said you would actually be going on holiday, and not any old holiday, but to a Holiday Camp. Butlin's or Pontins, how bloody fantastic! (Little did we know)  A totally British institution, the holiday camp.  I don’t think there’s anywhere else in the world that has anything like it. The first Butlin’s was opened in 1936 in the glamorously named Skegness by Billy Butlin who’d had a terrible h ..read more

Last week I had a bit of a skive off work and we went to Universal Studios for the day.   We had gone there back in the summer and the lines were horrendous - including spending 1.5 hours in line for the Harry Potter ride, only to be told it had broken down [Grr…].  While we were there, we had decided to pay the extra $14 for our tickets to last a year.   It turns out their version of a ‘year’ is actually seven months (which included many, many black out dates), but whatever, we had great plans to use our tickets loads of times, so it would be a great deal.  As usual, that ..read more

When I worked in England and I don’t know if this is still the case now, but when it was your birthday, it was your responsibility to bring cream cakes to the office for everyone.  While this seems to be a bit backwards, at least you were guaranteed to get a cake you actually like.  This doesn’t seem to happen in America.  Sometimes there is a monthly “birthday celebration" with a cake for the entire office, but nothing like those delicious real cream cakes of my memories. Why am I going on about this?  Well, I work in a big office and there are birthdays almost every week ..read more

It’s been raining in California for the past two weeks.  By rain, I don’t mean a little drizzle, I mean full on pouring; raining cats and dogs; pelting down; bucketing down, whatever you want to call it, there’s been a lot of rain. Now this is California, the state that has been under drought conditions for as long as I can remember. Every year we are told “save water” and “don’t wash your car or use your hose.”  The lack of any rain whatsoever just creates terrible summer fire conditions and without fail, every summer there is a glut of fires sweeping through mountains and towns ..read more

My other half is in a motorcycle club and around Christmas, there’s always a lot of charity going on. A few of weekends ago was their annual Toy Run which, this year, was to benefit Hillsides, a non-profit children’s foster care and family resource program in the Los Angeles and Pasadena areas of California.  Apparently they help 13,000 children (yes, that many) I will admit that the day did not start brilliantly for me – we had to leave our house at 6:00 a.m. and the temperature was only 37f (17c).  On a motorbike that feels like -10, just so you know.  This year, I gave the ..read more