Success!

See, I do actually get round to things:

• chocolate and beetroot muffins were a success, if a little bizarre.
• Studio 60 and Mad Men series 1 have arrived. Hurrah!
• complicated walls climbed - but there's still a bugger of a route that I can't get. If only my arms were a couple of inches longer...
• Tynemouth Long Sands beach was fab on Sunday, if a little chilly. Rather strangely there were a bunch of folks (studenty types) racing up and down pulling a plough, creating deep furrows in the beach. This was all being captured on film by an Andy Warhol-esque character, with a shock of white hair. I am none the wiser.
  

Confessions of a book junkie

It's the covers (and especially the spines) that do it for me. I can be browsing in a bookshop, or a library, and it'll be the font on the spine that jumps out at me, making me take it down from the shelf. Then there's the cover to consider...before finally opening a couple of pages, scanning the text, and seeing if I fancy reading it.

I know. I should have a more literary method of deciding what to read next.

For fellow enthusiasts:

• there's a lovely exhibition on at the moment at my local art gallery, the Shipley, all about 70 years of Penguin design. They've got covers (and penguins) galore, and some rather covetable notebooks covered in images of spines.
• 30 novels worth buying for the cover alone
• redesigns of famous novels
• the Pelican project
  

Wish list

At last, the big work project comes to an end, so blogging can resume. There's only so many words you can summon up in an evening when you've spent all day editing someone else's.

Here's what I'd like to get round to in the rest of the month:

(a) make a bit more headway into the research for the radio play I'd like to write.
(b) bake some cakes (chocolate and cherry muffins were good, but I've got a stack of beetroot that I think I need to disguise in some chocolate brownies too).
(c) watch some more telly - I've just ordered Studio 60 and Mad Men (series 1) from Amazon, and I'm rather liking the new sitcom Free Agents on Channel 4. Mind, at the rate I watch telly, this lot could take me til 2012 to get through.
(d) climb some complicated walls (they've reset the holds at Climb Newcastle, and there's a couple of routes that have me foxed at the moment, much to my annoyance).
(e) start thinking about what seeds I want to grow in the veg planters this year.
(f) go to the seaside in the sunshine, and eat salty, vinegary fish and chips.

As there's only 12 days left, I reserve the right to roll this over into March...

Grrr

What she said. Thank you Patroclus - my thoughts entirely.

I spent the first two years of my daughter's life looking after her at home. It was a full-time job. Like many people, I talked about my job...

Another day out in the big smoke

I rather like London in the snow - not quite as romantic as Paris, but pretty good fun.


It was a gorgeous walk through Bloomsbury, Russell Square and King's Cross - not a bus, taxi or car in sight. In fact it was eerily quiet, apart from the squidge of shoes on snow, and the thud of the odd snowball. There was even a snowman waiting at the traffic lights in Russell Square, which made me giggle.