Here’s a new McQueen Novak bag to delight you and bring you Tuesday evening joy:

You can see me “clutch” my clutch with wrinkly old hands with ouchy bits at the sides which I chew while Mark watches Game Of Thrones and I try to care but I can’t and so my fingers get chewed and my toenails get unevenly pulled off and I think to myself

“I don’t know what’s happening. Is that princess-lady good or bad, and where are the rude bits? Im sure that guy was the politician in The Wire! I think I need a new black clutch bag” and so we come full circle and I gamely throw my unlove for that unengaging TV show into the ring, for everyone else in the known world to violently disagree with me. I don’t know why I can’t love it. Perhaps I was born defective in the ability to like really complicated and boring stories involving boring dragons and dull battles and forgettable place-names and incestuous royal-lovin’ between good-looking siblings or sommat.

Anyway, that particular black beauty was found at the Alexander McQueen sample sale last week in ancient old Clerkenwell Green, where I met Celia and she bought a burgundy bag big enough for the laptop and we hit the Modern Pantry for coffee and average pastries. Of course, this pastry thing has got to stop. I put on my formerly favourite denim shirt this morning and found it distinctly snug at the upper arm. Only one upper arm, mind. And I confessed to Mark about the new sad snugness and he said that yes, his shirts all seem a bit tinier this week, and we sat and we pondered and we ate a croissant with jam.

There is a bit of melancholic-ness hanging about the flat this week, all in all, mostly because it is a little bit cold when that wind hits you and the dog bit me on Saturday and the dishwasher has broken and

*WORST OF ALL*

the DVD player won’t read discs anymore so we can’t finish The Sopranos or start something more interesting like Homeland (which I know we are late to, but I have been saving it up) and so the evenings have been taken up with

a) washing the dishes by hand (that is a cruel punishment for someone with hardly any unchewed skin left on the ends of her wrinkled fingers)

b) talking to each other in a vaguely yesteryear fashion – about the political unrest in Turkey, dog training methods, school sibling policies and debating whether carbonated water is bad for your teeth or not

c) baking Nigella’s brownies which are simply ridiculous, an unholy orgy of chocolate, eggs, butter and sugar all mixed and baked and oozing with devilment and Bad Choices, and

d) obsessively googling weekend properties to buy in the Isle of Wight.

Baby Names Are A Bit Boring Too

Currently I am leaning towards calling the new baby Rocky, owing to my love of Rocky Balboa and The Eye of The Tiger and Talia Shire (“Aaaaadrrrriaaaaannnnnn!”) and that excellent dirty downtown Philadelphia vibe and the pork pie hats. It’s because my big brother had a passionate love affair with Rocky, and it rubbed off on me, as did his love for The Carpenters and ABBA. But absolutely no one thinks that naming the baby Rocky is a good idea, so it may have to be Gus or Eli or Billy. As for a girl, I have decided Olympia is the best name ever, mostly because it could be shortened to Ollie and once I saw Olympia Dukakis in Greenwich in New York while I was eating a cupcake from Magnolia Bakery. That bit is  actually true, by the way.

Which naturally leads me to remembering that I saw Matt Le Blanc in Hyde Park a few weeks ago while I was with Amy who is beautiful and blonde and I SWEAR he gave us a Look even though I am 6 months pregnant and she was pushing her new tiny baby in a buggy and she had a most excellent story to tell about meeting him once night outside the Mayfair Hotel but I can’t say anymore because it is her story, not mine. Sigh. But it was as awesome as you’d imagine. And Mary Portas was in our garden as well on a recent drizzly day, and she was VERY EXCITING with her bob and her wife and her baby and her boyfriend jeans rolled up at the ankle in a very fashion-y way. I think I love her quite a bit.

Here is a photo of Virginia Lake, outside Windsor, where many Polish families and dog-lovers and mayflies go on a weekend to eat Tesco picnics and smoke. The dog went aswimmin’ even though he wasn’t allowed to, and went nearly halfway across the enormous lake and we thought he may have been gone for good, but then he turned and came back to us, nonchalant and totally cool. This is the third time he got off the lead and swam away:

His is the tiny ginger head on a mission. So we did that last week on the mid term holidays, as well as some serious dragon-hunting at the British Museum, a rocket show at the Science Museum, some ice creams from the gelato place in Whiteleys, some heavy TV viewing, a little bit of Tudor crown-making, plenty of walking the dog, three barbecues and one evening saunter through the park when we should have been in bed. And those little buggers slept in until 8am, and it was like a birthday EVERY DAY.