Backwards In High Heels

Garden Centre Sniggers

These plants never fail to amuse me. Yes it is juvenille, yes I should know better at my age but come on, they are funny.

 

London Curse - Beaten!

The London curse did not rear its ugly head - it had a good go but I slayed it and on Monday I got to the BBC comedy workshop. It was well worth it, we had a brilliant set of script editors guiding us through the day and were made to feel very welcome and inspired. That said I still managed to botch the end of my sketch but it did get its fair share of laughs at the evening performance.

I certainly came back feeling like I had a kick up the behind, in a good way. Perhaps it's old age but I am getting less tolerant of people taking advantage of my good nature (yes I do have one, don't pull faces) and I have to give more time and credance to following my ambitions. Ever notice the more you give of yourself, the takers actually show less apprecitation?

Well, no more. I am looking at my life as timetable and blocking off me time (I wonder if other freelance people who work from home identify with this?).

But let's not turn this into a moan of a blog when Monday was so helpful and positive. It was so good to be able to pick the brains of them that does and share a table with others who want to!

The evening performance was great fun and as well as having our sketches performed Lawrence & Gus tried out some of their new material which we'd been hearing rehearsed in the background back at the comedy dept. What we hadn't realised at the time was it was Lawrence & Gus, we thought it was the other half of the workshop who were just a lot better than us...

Workshop aside, there wasn't much time for anything else but  loved the view from the hotel thanks to being on the 14th floor and even managed to find a few minutes for retail therapy and food at St Pancras which is looking great after its upgrade. The last time I was in London, St Pancras was still a worksite.

Oh and for good measure - 2 Japanese tourists walked past me with face masks on and two French school children ran up to them and went 'aitchoo, aitchoo, aitchoo'.

 

 

The Magic Miele & Messy Carpet Test (Catchy, eh?)

So two weeks on and the Miele (without changing a bag - they're deceptively large) was still sucking like a <too rude a simile>.

I decided it would be fun to do a quick test. We've all seen them on the TV adverts were things are cleaned with one wipe. Well on a test piece of carpet I put talc, sugar and rolled oats. But no I didn't just sprinkle them on, I stood on them then got down on my hands and knees and worked it in with my fingers.  I was just going to take some before and after shots for fun but as you'll see two problems:

1 - Peggy decided to try the rolled oats (and add a few cats hairs for good measure)

2 - the talc dust in the air and the light reflecting from the mirror was causing orbs in the pictures which made it look like a scene from Most Haunted.

So, I filmed it with the mobile phone - hence not Spielberg quality but you get the impression. It didn't pose a problem for the Miele at all. What I really like (and anyone who has stray cat litter or biscuits will appreciate this!) is it doesn't 'spit' out at the sides when it vacuums up such things - look how it just sucks up the rolled oats.

Mum, she of the herniated discs and fibromyalgia, is 'driving' in the video and as you can see the cleaner really flows and corners easily, which is why she too would have happily kidnapped it for good. Whilst it stayed with us she put it right up behind our regular cleaner in the understairs cupbaord - I think she was hoping they'd mate.

Back to the messy carpet test - just a few lengths of vacuuming, back on my hands and knees, and there wasn't a speck of talc, sugar or oat to be found.

It went back today :( . I *heart* that cleaner.