152. Jeans

Much to the despair of my very elegant Parent, I wear jeans 360 days of the year. That's a shocking statistic, isn't it? I'm shocked. And it's not as if I don't own any trousers - I even have dresses and, wait for it, a couple of skirts. But I don't wear them, because why would I? I have jeans.

This debilitating reliance is, obviously, due to an absolute lack of sartorial imagination. But my reasoning is thus: If you go for solid blue, or black, and you don't allow any gee-gaws, and insist that the cuffs come down beyond your ankles, it is difficult to get jeans wrong. Most people look OK in jeans, including me. I have some which I think are probably 'good', and some which should be kept for indoors, and I have one proper designer pair which work miracles, but on a daily basis I know I look OK in my jeans. They go with everything. They're not expensive.

I'm depressing myself.

But the love affair may be facing a hiccup. I've been offered a 'proper' job - in the CITY! Which means that for the first time in my life I will not be able to wear jeans to work. A change is comin', people. And things may never be the same again...

151. Baking a Cake

So I'm sitting at my desk, and it's cold and grey, and I'm distracted because I'm having meetings for jobs which is good but also bad, so I think I'll go and bake a cake.

Despite my surname, I am not much of a baker. I can do cakes, but bread seems to be beyond me, unless I use one of those pre-mixed mixes. Which is cheating. I can do pizza dough, but that's easy.

Anyway, I remember telling the woman who interviewed me for school that I liked baking, and I remember the 'Pooh's Book of Baking' (or something similar) that I learned from. So I've been a caker for quite a while. Recently I have had some success with a lemon drizzle cake, and not long before that a gingerbread cake was incredibly delicious, but today I think is a day for either chocolate or coffee and walnut.

Baking a cake ticks two boxes: it's absorbing, creative activity, followed by cake. Coffee and walnut, I think. Mmmm.

150. Tina Fey

It's been a long time coming.

Sat down last evening to turn my CV into something more useful (a chocolate teapot?) and thought that I should enjoy myself while I worked. So I put on Season One of 30 Rock. The time flew by, of course, and I laughed a lot, and even managed to get some work done, and I was reminded of the sheer Goddessness that is Tina Fey.

Tina Fey wrote Mean Girls, which isn't to everybody's taste, but is much better than most of the other movies in that genre, and has some great jokes. Tina Fey wrote 30 Rock (most of it) and it was her idea - which alone makes her a Goddess. Tina Fey was the anchor for many years of the News section on Saturday Night Live. She was the first woman in the job and she was the Head Writer on the show - which makes her not only a Goddess but a kick-ass Goddess. Tina Fey wrote and starred in the only funny American Express ad. She won an Emmy for her impersonation of Sarah Palin on SNL. Yes, Baby Mama should have been better (but she didn't write it) and yes, Date Night could have been funnier (she didn't write it.) She's making a movie with Meryl Streep. How will I sleep until then?
She's a brunette.
She wears glasses.
QE BLOODY D.

149. Ambrosia Creamed Rice

This is a definite 'Marmite' moment. Rice pudding is one of those British gastronomic institutions that causes controversy wherever it goes. Like Gordon Ramsay, but sweeter.

I have made, and eaten, 'real' rice pudding, and it is a completely different beast. So we won't mention it again within the confines of this particular blog post.

But Ambrosia Creamed Rice, in its blue and green packaging, either in a tin or in a little yogurt pot, is nursery food of the highest order. Herself, obviously, refuses to be in the same room as a pot of Ambrosia Creamed Rice, but I buy one for myself when she is out or away, and enjoy every creamy mouthful.

148. Galaxy

When it comes to the Dairy Milk vs Galaxy debate (hotly contested in this house) I am staunchly in favour of Galaxy. I like Dairy Milk, but Galaxy is clearly so much better that it seems odd even to compare them.

Galaxy is smooth and creamy. Galaxy Cookie Crumble is smooth and creamy and occasionally a bit crunchy. Galaxy Hazelnut puts some delicious toasted hazelnuts into that smooth, creamy chocolate and we all know how good that would be. Then, as if to add insult to injury, there is Galaxy Ripple, which should be a banned substance as it is utterly addictive.

Any Dairy Milkers out there, be brave and try some Galaxy. You won't regret it, and you won't look back.

147. Carol Klein

I'm in love with Carol Klein. It's a pure, virtuous love - nothing sordid, thank you very much - but it is quite heartfelt.

For those what don't know, Carol Klein is a gardener. She's on the tellybox and in the papers and she writes books, too. If you're quite keen on these things it will interest you to know that Carol is in fact a plantswoman and that her cottage garden is also a nursery.

Whenever I try to gather myself to do some gardening Herself stares at me blankly and tells me that nothing will grow in our garden. This is patently ridiculous, but for some reason I never say 'pshaw' and shove my way past her - I think she might be telling me that the garden is her thing and I should butt out. Fair enough.

It's quite difficult to learn something you're not practising - but I've been watching darling Carol in her garden (thanks to a new series on the tellybox - Life in a Cottage Garden) and I'm picking up some tips for the day that I am allowed to get my hands dirty. And the reason that I love Carol is that she's an old-fashioned enthusiast. Her love for her garden and her role in the cycle of the garden is a shiny, palpable thing. She is enormously experienced and clearly hugely talented, but she isn't patronising (unlike most of those other Gardener's World wonks) and nor does she dumb-down - she talks and you listen and learn. She's kind of fab to look at too. She's in her mid-sixties but she's all crazy blonde highlights and her gardening jacket is an ancient leather bomber jacket. She's got more energy than I do. She bounces around talking about things in the garden she loves and it calms my soul. She represents everything that I admire: passion, enthusiasm, dedication, longevity, joy and a kind of wilful doggedness. And of course as I"m watching and listening I'm seeing such beautiful things in her Devon garden - not least of which is her Lakeland puppy. Sigh.

Anyway - with Carol in my life the cold, dark days of job-hunting and penury seem a little lighter and longer, and who knows, maybe one of these days Herself will let me loose in the garden and I'll get to see what all the fuss is about.

146. Trebor Extra Strong Mints

One of the many things that is fabulous about my Parent is that she always has a mint about her person. Most often these days she'll be packing a box of Mentals - tiny liquorice mints with the force of a nuclear blast. But for all the years of my life before she discovered Mentals, she had Trebor Extra Strong Mints and now I find that I keep them in my car and quite often in my bag.

I think that for mint connoisseurs Extra Strong Mints count as sweets, but for me they are the perfect balance between minty and sweet. They'll tidy your breath up, and give you a little sugar boost - perfect for the last few minutes before an interview or date, for example, or other nerve-racking appointment. They're what I buy in the shop if I need to break a note (how the shopkeepers of the world must love me) and Herself and I feed them to each other at regular intervals on long journeys, just as I grew up watching the Parent and the Old Man passing the mints to and fro.

So mints come full-circle, it seems. Not sure about the Mentals, but Extra Strong Mints are past, present and future.

145. Elinor Lipman

Elinor Lipman is an American novelist. She's a witty, stylish writer. Her books are light on plot, heavy on character. But it's not 'chick lit'. There are no bizarrely confident twentysomethings with glamorous jobs shagging their way to the top. There are no shark-like megalomaniacs, ditsy blondes or crumbling ancestral piles. Instead there are 'normal' people who just happen to be very funny, or going through strange times.

The key element of her writing, for me, is the lightness of touch. Her eye is remorseless in its search for telling detail, but her authorial attitude is non-judgmental. She lets actions speak for themselves. The more writing I do the more I admire her skill. So her books become both carrot and stick for the junior scribbler. My recommendations? My faves so far are 'Dearly Departed' and 'The Family Man'.

144. Scrabble on iPhone

My family are not game players. Growing up, we did not get hours of pleasure sitting around a board game or a game of cards, unless we were in the wilds of Scotland (or Ireland) and there was LITERALLY nothing else to do. Yet the Parent is now a keen Bridge player (and is teaching me and Herself), middle brother plays Poker, Herself and I play lots of Rummy and quite a lot of Trivial Pursuit and now I am addicted to Scrabble on the iPhone.

Herself is dyslexic, so Scrabble is like Chinese water torture for her, poor dear. Although she is bloomin' clever and extremely competitive so if she plays at all she's playing to win and you'd better watch out. The Artist (also bloomin' clever and 'stremely competitive) is a DEMON at Scrabble - verging on unbeatable unless you get very lucky - partly because she is very good at the tactical aspect of the game.

This, it turns out, is key. I play myself on the iPhone (the computer's too good and I get cross) and surprisingly enough the play is pretty even. But I am learning the tactics, and yesterday had my first genuine, unfaultable 90 point word. It was great. So one of these days I might slip out of my cloak of invisibility and play a real game on a real board. Wonder if I'll like it?

143. 'Cranford'

The TV series 'Cranford', from the books by Elizabeth Gaskell, is a good example of British drama at its best. It has a wonderful cast, a near flawless script, painstaking attention to detail and an alchemical spring in its step.

Also, cleverly, they didn't make enough of it.

I laugh. I cry (a lot). I sigh. I say 'Oh Miss Matty' quite frequently. Herself and I curtsey to each other and drink tea out of good china and wish we had bonnets to wear.

It takes a while to get over a Cranford viewing session - nothing else quite matches up - but while it's on the twenty-first century disappears.

142. Talent

The first escalator going down into Angel tube is a long one, so my brain had a couple of minutes to register the music. As I walked along the tunnels and hopped aboard the second escalator, and the music got louder and more miraculous, I got quite excited at the thought that somewhere ahead of me a real live person was playing his guitar and causing this amazing sound.

And there he was, hunched over, eyes closed, lost in the music. The temptation to find a quiet place to stand and just enjoy for a few minutes was strong, but I was on a deadline, so I put some money in his guitar case, beamed at him, and went to stand on the platform where, thank goodness, the music sounded at its best.

Talent. Man, what a thing that is. I know nothing about the blues, but I know that guy was good. And probably he'd worked hard to become so, but he wasn't sitting there playing Oasis covers - he was the real thing.

Then I went to Tate Modern, my head still full of talent and what that means, and I walked past Shakespeare's Globe, and the Golden Hinde, and then I looked at the Sunflower Seeds in the Turbine Hall, and I thought about Gauguin and I looked at some other paintings and then I came home and watched TV - good TV - written by my very talented friend. Then I read a rather beautiful book and almost couldn't sleep for gladness that some people in this world are talented, and that they allow the world, and me in particular, to sit for a while and listen to the music.

141. Trees

Well, here we are in 2011. Happy New Year and all that. I promise to do better with my blogging and will be aiming for a daily post, unlike Royal Mail. Ha ha.

Trees.

Easy to take for granted, aren't they? As Herself drove herself, myself and the dogself down to the Big Smoke from the Salty Place on the Sea yesterday, I found that I was suddenly very aware of the trees. The great oaks in Glemham Park, the birches along by the river, the funny little straggly ones by the side of the A12 and all the others in-between. They didn't look vulnerable, in their leafless state, they looked beautiful, standing tall and strong, showing off their glorious forms for all to see.

It's all too easy, particularly in a city, to put the trees in with the buildings and the cars and the street furniture and the people who really need your help -- and render them invisible. But the trees were here long before I was and they'll be here long after I'm gone, so maybe I should try harder to see them, and maybe in doing so I'll see other things that will gladden my heart...