Lazy Days

I booked myself three days off this week. It has so far proved to have been a brilliant idea, even if I do say so myself. I found myself getting very annoyed at the fact that I seemed to spend one of my days off running errands, doing the shopping and generally being out of the house for the whole day. The other day off was spent firmly in the house, cleaning, washing, tidying up and such lark. Any time left over I try to catch up with friends and maybe get some me-time, but seeing as there still is only 24 hours in a day and I really do ideally need 8 hours sleep per night, it really is limiting my options.

I shared my first day off with Mr S. Few errands, bit of shopping, bit of cleaning. Our old neighbour had contacted me the day before to ask us to help her move her dog house from the old house to her new place. Apparently our old landlord had just flung the dog house over the wall to the side of the old house where Mr S and I used to live, despite her telling him she was coming back for it. Charming man. So I went up to help her move it, my little car is surprisingly spacious when the back seats are flattened. When I got home, after a tour of her new house, which is lovely, we just lounged. I tried out a new recipe for a pizza base which was a huge success. I got the recipe from one of my Twitter-friends only to realise that I'd had the same recipe in Jamie's Italy -book for a few years now, earmarked and everything. Nothing like a recommendation to get you moving, eh?

Yesterday I spent catching up with friends. Good old chats, lots of laughs, insane amounts of tea and coffee and plenty of biscuits and cake. My Finnish friend, Marjo is something short of a wizard in the kitchen. Mocha-squares they're called in Finland, I suppose the closest thing here would be a brownie, but these things are a lot lighter and more sponge-like in texture and topped with a chocolate-coffee icing. See, I'm drooling already. So so tasty!

So, my third day off is today and I am blissfully aware that on a normal working week I would be getting stuck into trying to explain to a German tourist, who doesn't speak any English, what a parsnip is. (Apparently, calling it a white carrot isn't informative enough) Yet here I am, in our office, in my comfiest (and by default, the ugliest) baggy tracksuit bottoms and a hoodie, sporting a rather fetching bedhead, sipping my second cup of coffee, trawling the internet for stuff and not caring how long it takes me.

Conveniently enough, it's raining outside so I'm not likely to feel the need to go out and rake the grass we finally got cut on Monday. Or go out for a walk. Or, indeed anything that requires getting out of the house. The wheelie bin is at the bottom of the driveway, I may stretch to going out a bringing it back up. But I'll wait for it to stop raining first.

I have a stack of magazines to catch up on, the last two issues of the National Geographic on the top of the pile. I'm still reading Jo Nesbo's The Redeemer, which is proving very good indeed and nicely filling the void left by Stieg Larssen's Millenium-trilogy. I'm doing two loads of laundry, and two only, washing the sheets (I love Clean Sheets Day). I also have a pile of DVDs to watch, I'm contemplating on either having a Harry Potter marathon, or a Bones marathon. But the important thing is, I don't have to do any of these things if I don't choose to. I could quite happily veg out on the couch, listen to the radio and pet the cats. How about that for a lazy day, huh?

Dear Campers

Okay, I just cannot help myself. Another blog post about I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here, I hear you say? But it is fascinating viewing, it really really is. It even made me switch over from BBC's Children In Need 2010, which was a brilliant night of TV, too, more of which a little later.



 
Earlier on, the much put-upon ten little celebrities were joined by foul-mouthed comedienne Jenny Eclair and the over-sized mobile phone carrying Dom Joly. They do this every year, the producers. They wait for the group to gel a little bit, usually for about a week and then they decide to stir things up a bit by dropping in another two mouths to feed. It doesn't always go down well, particularly this year when our Dear Gillian keeps getting voted in to do the trials she's not excused from on medical grounds, and she keeps fainting into the arms of Medic Bob. In fairness though she did manage four stars (= four meals for camp) last night in a tube of water and other stuff. She was fine with baby gators, but bailed when faced with a spider. Go figure.

Anyway, new arrivals. I was expecting Dom to be a loud mouth, shit-stirrer and Jenny to go in cool, calm and collected. I was half right. In their Shack task  Jenny kept her cool a lot better than Dom did, picking out stars from underneath layers and layers of cockroaches. Well done Jenny. Once she got into camp, she took an immediate dislike to Lembit. I know his kidney bean shaped head must be a bit disturbing from close up, but surely a judgement like that should take more than half hour? She called him a cock, apparently. Maybe it's just because he used to be an MP. Most of them are cocks. But he's not an MP anymore. Give him a chance, Jenny, he's just like a special needs puppy. Annoying, yes, but you can't kick him to the curb either, without feeling incredibly bad about yourself.

Dom, on the other hand seems to be taking it all in his stride, getting quite relaxed in the camp. I'm still waiting for that massive mobile phone to emerge for a special guest starring spot any time now. Please, ITV?

Oh, Linford Christie has turned out to be a roaring disappointment. Apparently, he's not only 50 years of age, but also has the mindset of someone from the 1950's. Having pretty much attacked Playmate Kayla for posing for Playboy, he proceeded to liken her to a prostitute and said that his own daughter would find herself homeless should she ever even dream of doing something like that. You're lucky you can run fast, Linford (Thanks for that, @hollywills). Dagenham girl Stacey jumped in to defend womankind and prostitutes (male and female) all over and my inner feminist was cheering her on. She was the only one to speak out. You are my champion, Stacey!!

Okay, 12 in a camp, getting a bit crowded, yeah? Let's send in another camper, then, shall we! Talk about the most lackluster welcome ever! Poor Alison Hammond, she wasn't to know. Or was she? Don't get me wrong, I like her, did when she was on Big Brother. But she is loud. And big. Big personality and big as is takes up a lot of room. And probably used to eating a tad more than rice and veggies. In her VT she did say she wanted to go in to lose some weight, which she will more than likely achieve unless the hungry campers turn on her and decide to slow-roast her over the campfire. She did bring the camp a Chocolate Orange. With 12 pieces in it. For 13 people. Think these things through, Alison!

The Chocolate Orange didn't really go very far due to Gillian's fainting fit at the trial earlier. Poor Alison was feeling a bit self-conscious at mealtime even offering to skip the dinner because she was the last one in. She tucked into whatever it was they had on offer that night, afterwards pointing out that Gillian, who also does the cooking, gets everything ready, dives into the food first spooning out a big portion for herself and then leaving the last person in he queue to scrape the bottom of their all-purpose pan. I don't know when they'll start voting people out of there, but before they do, it is going to get rough going around that campfire.

And poor Shaun. Hermit Shaun. All he wants is to go back to camping with four other blokes, doing blokey things and spend most of his time asleep in his hammock. Please don't go, Shaun, you have so much more to offer.

Now then. Children In Need. Great show, but in all honesty I really didn't care about anyone else on stage once these lads took to it. Take That. Sigh and swoon. I loved them all through my teens, I remember being heartbroken when they broke up and I was absolutely ecstatic when they announced their comeback. And then Robbie came back and him and Gary made up and did that song... I am swooning as I write this. I mean come on, look at them! They look amazing. Even little Mark, who I imagine will in years to come look more and more like a cross between Dobby The House-Elf from Harry Potter movies and Frodo Baggins. But Jason. Oh, Jason. Never mind your Chocolate Orange, bring me Jason Orange! Yum. I'd tap it and unwrap it...