three little words

I uttered three little words on Friday night that I thought I never would.

Now before every girl on this planet gasps aloud and falls off her chair in shock horror let me offer you a brief explanantion to the events that led me to utter those ghastly words.

Friday night saw me donning some smarty pants clothes and joining Rich on his Lacrosse Christmas Dinner celebrations. I decided that despite the cold weather it would be a good idea to wear my favourite and quite high pair of shoes that I own. They are gold and white and I utterly adored them the first time I set my eyes on them.

Anyway six and half hours later...a little inebriated and having danced and thrashed the night away I made my way home with Rich. By this point my shoes had been undone in order to make my feet feel a little less uncomfortable.

At one point I found myself walking along the street concentrating really hard on putting one foot infront of the other whilst singing Oasis' Wonderwall to myself. Rich had momentarily left me to walk on my own as he was answering a call of nature. He told me the next morning that he had no recollection of our walk home together!!

Anyway what felt like hours later we made it safely back to his and were embraced by warm air and soft carpets on which my poor achy feet could rest upon.

Alas during the middle of the night, desperatley needing to attend to my own call of nature, I leapt out of bed and the room span (I was still drunk) and the pain that I felt in my feet was almost unbearable. And that, was when I uttered those three little words. 'I hate shoes'.

So sorry.

Addictions

I love my morning walks as they give me the chance to relax for half an hour and listen to the radio on the way into work.

I have to say as winter draws in it does become more difficult to get motivated to walk but I am managing it.

I remember one walk in particular last year when I left work when it was snowing and I literally walked the whole length from the centre of town down Sandridge Road and up to the King William Pub (apologies to those of you who have no idea what I am talking about)all on my own. The snow was coming down so thick and fast that my fotsteps behind were vanishing within seconds!

So, as I say. I like my walks.

Anyway this morning's walk presented me with a whole lot of other stuff to think about....

As I was minding my own business walking past the bus stop I saw an advert for Brent Cross christmas shopping. The advert showed a gorgeous tall antique looking cupboard/wardrobe crammed full of shoes. The cupboard had about six shelves and each was the right height for the sets of shoes eg. boots on one shelf and high heeled shoes on the other. Do you know what my reaction was, my heart pumped quicker, I am sure my pupils became dilated, and I thought to myself "how did they know that that is exactly what I wanted?".

I had barely had enough time to get over the shock of somebody reading my most superficial and frankly materialistic thought about shoes when I was struck by another bus stop advert (this road is very long ladies and gents). Again it was for Brent Cross Christmas shopping but this time it was scented candles and perfumed bottles of bubble bath.

Do you know what? The advert left me totally cold and indifferent, I simply thought "how could they have got it so wrong?"

I have summised over the course of today that I am a girl who adores shoes, I am proud of what I own, hence the need to preserve the shoes in a cupboard, I am ever so slightly ashamed of my obsession with shoes, hence the need to hide them in a cupboard and in an odd twist even to me the idea of having a bath surrounded by candles and perfumed stuff just does not appeal to me one bit!

Yours shoe fetishist Yarris xxx

EU ADORO SAPATOS E BOTAS E SANDALIAS
Translation: I LOVE SHOES AND BOOTS AND SANDALS

Jean Luca Warm

Eh belissima Roma.

We thank you for your kind hospitality. We enjoyed your yummy pizza's. We salute you for your wonderful gelatti. We admired your wonderful architecture. We tried to figure out how the Pantheon got built without the aid of AutoCad. We felt queezy at the top of St Peter's Domo. We settled for your luke warm showers in the hotel.

And we want to come back to you.

Ciao for now.

Yours, Hormone Harris

PS. "Scusi would you like some long stem red roses, a photo taken on my crappy polaroid camera, a flashing Trevi fountain replica or a horrid malleable balloon face whilst you stand/drink/chat in Rome and are minding your own business?"

Kate, Pete, Helen, Marty and Tania - "NO. Piss right off mate"

The One where the dining room table got burnt

It was my birthday yesterday and thank you to Rich for the 'beautiful' Barbie posting on his blog - makes me feel a whole less rubbish about turning 26. Somehow i feel SO much closer to 30 than i did two days ago (obvious i know but i still can't shake the feeling off).

Anyhow in celebration i invited a few friends to my folks place on Saturday night and i think (?) everyone had a fab time. It was great to see everyone i love the most in one room under one roof!!!

At the end of the night i was clearing up and came across a very naughty night light which had been left on the dining room table....it had sadly overheated and burnt a perfect circle shaped mark on the very nice dining room table in the living room.

Good one, eh?! After two days of feeling nauseous about telling the folks about what had happened i 'fessed up and unsurprisingly now feel like rubbish!!

Hey ho! Such is life!

Anyway thank you to one and all for the lovely presents and the booze (yum, yum ,yum!).

Kate the champagne was superb!!

Quem tem um numero de telefone de um carpinteiro?
Translation: Who has a number for a carpenter?

26 year old Yaris xxxx

Why does it always rain on me?

So I have recovered from my ill phase and on Saturday took myself down to Exeter to see two of my bestest buds in the whole world. Within minutes of seeing Clare she was already trying to plan the next few hours of our day with the utmost military precision. The thing about Clare is that she loves to have a plan. Which is great when you are visiting 'foreign' places and only have a limited time in which to see them BUT we were in Exeter and all I wanted to do was mooch around. Now the thing about me is that I love to shop and whenever I see Clare I always end up dragging her off to some shop or another that doesn't fit in with 'the plan'!

Jo joined us at around sixish and the merriment began, I say this because the thing about Jo (or jojo as most of us call her) is that she has the world's dirtiest laugh. What with my knack for saying filthy things and her knack for laughing dirtily I think we scare Clare a little on occasions. Anyway on Saturday night good food was eaten and fine G & T's were drunk and then we took ourselves off to Exeter City.

Within minutes of walking into the bar, looking like drowned rats as it did not stop raining the whole time we were there, we were joined by Rory and Barry - complete strangers, one was in law and the other was 'self employed'. You know what, as Rory was not forthcoming with what he actually did for a living I decided not to pursue it any further. They seemed like frightfully nice chaps, if a little posh, and I always tend to get 'posher' when confronted with well spoken people. It defies explanation but there we have it......anyway thanks to Rory for taking a great picture of us on my phone. Jojo's cleavage looked FAB!

Then two other lovely men joined us, Ben and Oxo, the latter being Clare's gorgeous boyfriend, although I have to say that Ben was rather scrummy too ;-)

It is so nice to meet Oxo after all this time. I have been really curious and eight months later I was not dissapointed. He clearly adores Clare which is so damn cool. What was even cooler was the conversation between Jojo and Ben which went along the lines of 'If you had to live without one which would it be, sex or music'. Now considereing that Ben and Oxo are both musicians this was a really shitty question to pose! We were debating the merits of music v sex for quite sometime I can tell you. Your comments on said subject are welcomed and encouraged!!

On Sunday we took ourselves off to the continental market in Exeter and bought lots of lovely food from them. In fact sunday was a great food day all round. A baguette, greek salad, paella and salami were consumed for lunch and when I got back from my packed train journey from the country to the city I was greeted by a very handsome fella who whisked me off for a Thai meal in St Albans. Yum! I had the most divine steamed chicken in the world and Rich had the most foul smelling chicken EVER. Poor guy, I think between us we only managed a couple of mouthfulls of it!

Anyway maybe this blog should carry a food warning - beware do not read if you are hungry!! It's like they say, never go shopping on an empty stomach cos you end up buying ebverything you crave for there and then and dont get anything remotely useful for the rest of the day/week!!! I have eaten already but all this talk of food is making me hungry again, dammit!!

Well my week ahead looks quite interesting; on Tuesday I am off to Winchester to listen to Lord Anthony Giddens give a talk on globalisation (he is singlehandedly responsible for the Third Way theory which has so influenced Blair's policies) and on Thursday I am going Dog Racing, something I have wanted to do for a very very long time. Should be hilarious as I have no concept of betting terminologies and knowing me as soon as I win one race I am likely to get so excited that I bet all my wordly possessions!!

Se vais visitar Exeter lembra-te to chapeu de chuva. Translation: If you're visiting Exeter remember to take an umbrella.

I didn't !!

Ta ra pet, ta ra xxx