Been away but now back. Brought the warm sunny sun back from Blackpool with us. Dawn Of The Dead was great. Blood and guts, shopping malls, zombies, redneck hotties, cute dogs and a downbeat ending. Loved it. Spent much of the weekend up a ladder painting indoors and riding up and down the prom on our bikes with Edward trying to keep up behind us (bloody stumps where once were legs). Ate lots of non weight-watcher food and suffered tremendous guilt. Visited St Halliwells (patron saint of slimmers) and said three hail Geri’s to absolve us of all remorse and then bought pizza on the way home.

There is no graffiti in our toilets at work but the following lone statement has appeared in the past few days:

'The ONLY natural thing for your DNA to do is AGE'

Who'da thunk civil servants could be so profound.

Dunno which horror film to see this weekend at the cineplex by the sea. Dawn of the Dead or that bloody 'Jesus died to save us' thing. Both would be good, just so we can compare special effects and death scenes. I saw the Romero Dawn Of The Dead when it came out and it scared the bejesus out of me. It shouldn't have really as it was so tongue in cheek and cheesy but, back then, I didn't do irony and thought that was how we were all going to die (such an impressionable 16 year old). It was shown on a double bill with Scum which was quite enjoyable but put me off wanting to try bumming (for a few more years anyway).
Another popular double-bill at that time was The Incredible Melting Man and Coma. Both these films also worried me into running all the way home in the dark (when I finally got to see the Purple pixies Paisley Park Complex years later it reminded me of the hospital from Coma). I used to buy American horror movie magazines from a 'specialist' shop in Newcastle every now and then and was fascinated by a huge article on the making of the Incredible Melting Man. About a year later, while making my way to school, I wandered past the local cinema and stopped dead in my tracks in front of the 'Coming Soon' poster. There, in full gory colour, was The Incredible Melting Man (on the poster, not in person) And it was a AA certificate (minimum age 14). Hurrah! New films started on Sundays in those days so there I was on opening night with 75p in my pocket (45p entrance and 30p for sweets) vibrating with excitement. Come 10.30pm I was racing home (in case the IMM was chasing me) then burst indoors to tell Mum and Dad all about the movies. "You'll give yourself nightmares watching all that rubbish' Mum said. I never did though.

Dear Diary
Friday night was fun. Met up with him and his ‘her indoors’. They were nice. He joined us which was very nice too. Talked shite and got drunk on this. Stumbled home and fell to bed. Woke up at 3am in a panic about my work bag (I’ve a phobia about drunkenly leaving bags on the underground). Located it, sighed with relief, went back to sleep then woke at 9 with a hangover. Dentist at 10 (treatment finished now). Went to Sainsburys and a garden centre in the country (no Russian vines in stock!) then watched City Of God (fantastic). Tom came round on Sunday. I cooked a chicken lunch. Darren and Tom drank 4 bottles of wine while I abstained and painted the ceiling in the hall. Darren had his hangover before bed so luckily felt fine this morning. Two four-day-weeks-at-work in a row now as we’re off to Blackpool this Friday till Monday. Hurrah!

Spooky. I was riding the 73 bus to Islington at lunchtime (to collect some digital pics from the printers to decorate our newly painted hall), sitting upstairs, gazing out of the window with my MP3 player on random mode. Last week at the school reunion thingy I was forced to dance by an old sweetheart to Shack Up by A Certain Ratio. We stayed on the dance floor because Coup by 23 Skidoo came on next and I was a bit tiddly by then so didn’t mind everyone seeing that my spakka dancing had not improved over the years. Anyway, today on the bus my player randomly chose to play Shack Up while we inched down Oxford Street. This was spookily followed by Uptown Top Ranking by Althea and Donna (also played last week at the ‘do’ though I was at the buffet table by then). Now for the really spooky bit; Coup was the next song chosen from over 4000 tracks! Now, I know some folk will have their theories about probabilities and how this selection was not bizarre at all but I find it a little bit scary that space, time, machinery and memory can all conspire to make certain moments of ones day mysterious and magical.
Off to drink the Oddverses under the table now.

Oh, this is class. Put your speakers on and sit back and fall in love with Judy Finnegan saying fuck. Made for the cinema but denied a certificate.

Raced to Blackpool in three and a half hours on Wednesday night. Left London at ten thirty and was in bed by the sea at tooth hurty (which it was following a second bout of dental horror earlier that evening).
Next morning on the beach was majestic. It was blowing a gale but the sun was up and the sky was a stunning blue. Edward went crazy running on the hard sand chasing the sea birds through the shallow pools while I shivered and laughed at him.
On Friday I drove through the Lake District and then across to Newcastle to stay with my parents and attend an old friends 40th birthday party. I walked past the venue twice before swallowing hard and walking in. Four hours later I had caught up with most of the old gang, met their third wives, seen pictures of their snotty nosed kids and reminded them that I still prefer snails to oysters (“oh, I thought that was just a nasty rumour”).
Saturday was Dads birthday but he was busy doing Masonic stuff so it wasn’t until the evening that we all sat down and pigged out on Chinese food and chocolate birthday cake. We watched The Deep End on telly. It had gayers in it so Dad threw Edwards ball for him during those bits (the adult equivalent of putting a cushion over your head during Doctor Who). Later that night me and Mum wet ourselves laughing at the gas canister sketch on Harry Hill’s TV Burp. No, really, a bit of wee actually came out.
On Sunday I was summoned back to the London by my bf because we had run out of milk and fabric conditioner. I walked into the house and found him up a ladder in sexy little painter-man shorts with a wet paint brush and Sunday afternoon football blaring on the telly. Nice.

Off to Blackpool tonight for a couple of days. Then a scary school reunion on Friday night near Newcastle and Dads birthday on Saturday (so two birds killed with one stone so to speak). Back on Monday. Take care kids.

Hello, this is Carlton, your doorman...
I watched TV in the 70’s. In 1970 I was 6 years old and we had a TV on which the channels had to be changed using a knob on the windowsill. Rediffusion was an early version of cable TV and it was successful in the North East area because, believe it or not, until 1974 the only TV channel you could get on your TV with an aerial was the BBC.
I used to love watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show. It ran in the UK on Tyne Tees from 1972 until 1977 and looking back now I can see I was in ‘homo-training-mode’ as my favourite characters were the camp and quick witted journalist Murray and Rhoda the sassy upstairs neighbour. I loved Mary’s apartment with the sunken living room, shag pile carpet and crazy orange patterned fabrics and she was responsible for making me want to work in an office environment where gossip and water cooler chitchat was rampant (mission accomplished since 1987). The show was unique at the time because a female lead character on TV was leading a happy, successful life without necessarily looking for Mr. Right. The show was able to handle serious issues such as freedom of the press, premarital sex and divorce in an honest, funny, intelligent manner without being preachy and was awarded a record twenty-nine Emmys in it's seven seasons. I bought the 4 DVD box set of the first season of The Mary Tyler Moore Show on e-bay and it arrived yesterday so expect much polyester dressing up and plastic shoe wearing madness in the next few weeks (I prefer a flat pump with an apple motif).


And then it happened.
Hazel Frederick was walking along Nicollet Street in Minneapolis, coming from Dayton’s Department Store, when she saw something she’d never seen before: a pretty dark-haired young girl running out into the traffic in the middle of the street, taking off her hat, and tossing it up in the air. Hazel had no idea why anyone would do something like that, but young people did some strange things these days. As she watched in alarm, Hazel could see the pretty girl was in a lot of danger; the traffic was something fierce, and any kind of accident could happen. As Hazel watched, the girl retrieved her hat, and made it to the other side of the avenue. Since it seemed to be all right, Hazel went on her way, and thought nothing more about it, except maybe, ‘Crazy kids.’ She had more shopping to do, and it was a rare day off for her.
Fast-forward a few months, to Studio City, California: a team of film editors was assembling the footage shot in Minneapolis. The idea was to use shots of Mary Tyler Moore to form a montage, or grouping, of scenes that showed her character, Mary Richards, in her daily life around Minneapolis. The montage was to end with the shot of the hat-tossing, which had turned out spectacularly well. Mary Tyler Moore looked wonderful, and the hat toss was exactly the right exuberant gesture. It had already been decided that the show would have a lot of visual style, and that each episode would end with the actors caught in a freeze-framed moment. The montage was to get this treatment, too, and so the editors were working to freeze-frame it just as the hat swooped into the air. If anyone in the editing room noticed Hazel Frederick behind Mary Tyler Moore, it was probably to wish that Hazel had just kept walking, and hadn’t stared and scowled at Moore. Scowl or no scowl, the shot was too terrific to discard, and impossible to reshoot, anyway. For better or worse, the lady was in the picture.
When The Mary Tyler Moore Show débuted on CBS, the opening montage became famous. Fans soon made a ritual of catching the moment when the older lady behind Mary Tyler Moore appeared to stop and scowl at the actress who was having such a grand time tossing her hat. In Minneapolis, Hazel was recognized by viewers who knew her, including her family, who were the ones to tell her she was on a famous TV show.
Fast-forward to October, 1996: on a visit to Minneapolis, years after The Mary Tyler Moore Show went off the air, Mary Tyler Moore got to meet the lady who had been her inadvertent co-star. The occasion was a book-signing for Mary’s autobiography, After All, at the Mall of America. As curious as any fan about the scowl, Mary asked Hazel the reason for the stern expression. In no-nonsense fashion, Hazel shot back: ‘Because I thought you were going to kill yourself out there!’ She hadn’t been disapproving, she’d been concerned. She’d seen danger in what Mary was doing, and hadn’t wanted any harm to come to her. Mary Tyler Moore was so charmed, she introduced Hazel to the crowd of 5,000 as ‘my co-star’. Many of the people who bought Mary Tyler Moore’s book to have it signed asked for Hazel’s signature, too. Hazel signed as if she’d been doing it forever.
Hazel Frederick had a long and active life, one that finally ended in a Minnesota nursing home in 1999, surrounded by her large and loving family, at the age of 91. To the end of her days, she was famous for her impromptu walk-on. Unusually for somebody with only one television appearance, her obituary was picked up by news services all over the world.
It’s said that everybody who knew Hazel Frederick in her everyday life loved her. Fans of The Mary Tyler Moore Show did, too, and they always will.

It’s no fun when the only thing swollen in your mouth is your gums. The root canal infection is still with me and getting worse. Went to the dentist this morning and did a James Nesbitt (from that yellow pages ad where he shouts at the hairdresser in a nice way while his sister looks on from her car). Apparently amoxycillin is a weak antibiotic which some folk are immune to. I’m one of them. Now I’m on erthromycin which is much stronger and WILL stop my pain NOW.

Watched Secretary yesterday. Spank you very much.

And how good was that Status Anxiety documentray on Saturday? Bloody good. See more Alain De Botton groupies over at BW.

She terrorised the skies then popped in for a brew.


Oh how we laughed when we imagined that she would hover on her broom outside the upstairs window, then calmly climb off, reduce herself to a blue vapour and slither under the cracked pane of glass. She didn't though. She strolled in an hour late and thought a soft toy would placate us all. Which it did. We went all new age with mints on string and objects that represent the inner self. I took pictures even though death threats were made regarding posting them (I've walked in the shadow of death in Tajikistan and girls don't scare me so expect pics soon). We discussed his nuts, her boss, his wardrobes, his huge list of lovers, his shoes, her knack for relocating ghosts and my love of Ray Winstone in the bath in Quadrophenia.

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Princess Di lemma.
So, tomorrow evening I'm due to attend a select gathering of likeminded nutters bloggers for a sherry and bitch session. My husband (who was also invited) kindly offered to forego the pleasure and go home after work to look after Edward. Tonight he calls me from his office at 7pm (he should have been home at 6) and informs me that he's flying to Scotland tomorrow morning to sort out a crisis for his firm. Now, this can't be helped and it's just bad timing and poor luck but my dilemma is this: do I cry off and excuse myself from the soiree? do I attend the 'do' after work and leave poor Edward on his own in the house until I roll in drunk with kebab meat on my shirt? do I go home after work, walk and feed Edward then leave him alone again and troll back into town and try and catch up with the alcoholics? do I ring in sick tomorrow and stay off work, give me and the dog a perm followed by a long exhausting walk and then go out? Decisions, decisions.

The Forsythe front tooth saga continues. Yesterday afternoon the dentist numbed me with a big needle and then scraped, filed and sluiced my root canal. Apart from the injections I didn't feel a thing. He drilled a hole in the back of my front tooth to gain entry to the nerves and then filled it with something temporary. Very temporary as it turns out because once the anaesthetic had worn off I ate a sandwich and the swallowed the filling (and I don't mean the sandwich filling). So here I am at home waiting for the dentist to open at 9am so I can shout at him and have something a bit more substantial and sticky stuffed into my hole.

CHEER UP YOU LOT!