We left and wandered into The Burlington Arcade.  Laduree was heaving with macaron enthusiasts and it was too cold to sit out at the pavement tables.

We kept moving in our quest for sustenance.

Wandering down New Bond Street we happened upon the Halcyon Gallery, where they are showing the work of Dale Chihuly, an artist who runs a studio dedicated to making insane glass sculptures.

I’ve seen some of Chihuly’s work before.  He was responsible for a huge glass installation that used to reside on the ceiling in the lobby of The Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas.  I’ve also seen his stuff in various design museums over the years, and featured in a documentary about his work for a botanic garden in New York.

I have mixed feelings about Chihuly’s things.  They are fascinating, and the documentary showing the way he works and where he draws his inspiration from was mesmerising.  I don’t know whether I could live with a piece though.

I know I’d worry myself sick about breaking it.

And they’re not small things:

I love the organic shapes he creates, and how fluid everything looks.  It is brave work, and the fact that he uses such a brittle, complex material to work with blows my mind.  The stuff reminds me of undersea worlds, or alien plant life, or things that have fallen from space.

I love the way it looks solid and yet ephemeral, and despite the gargantuan size of everything he seems to do, it can still have a fragile beauty to it:

While we were gawking, we wandered into a room filled with this:

It was an installation on a black glass floating floor.  Dimension wise we’re probably talking 15 feet long by 8 feet wide.

While we were walking around it, this chap came into the room ahead of us.  I watched as he calmly reached over to one of the green, spiky fronds that made up part of the installation, and pulled it really hard.

When it didn’t move, he did it again.  As calm as you like.

By now I had nudged Gina and we were both watching him in horrified silence.

He moved around to the back of the sculpture where an enormous glass ball was resting behind all the other fragile, skittle like shapes.

He reached over and pushed it.

Twice.

For luck.

Amazingly the whole lot stayed in one place and did not come crashing down like a house of cards.

Sometimes you wonder why they have such fierce guards in most major art galleries.  Then something like this happens and you totally get it.

The sculpture the man was happily tugging away at was a cool £300,000.

If I had done that you could bet your boots I’d be weeping in a pile of very expensive glass shards about now.

Just watching him made me sweat.

I was still thinking about it half an hour later when we managed to find a Patisserie Valerie with a spare table and some eclairs going begging, particularly after one of the waitresses banged into our table trying to navigate a narrow space strewn with bags and stray feet.  She didn’t pour tea into my crotch, but it was a narrow miss, and I winced extra hard at the memory of the bloke and his glass fondling ways.

A day of happy non accidents I am glad to report.

After all that excitement and a trip to Rococo to stock up on chocolate supplies, we kissed and parted with a promise to meet up very soon and be equally extravagant in our doings.

Sated with art and cake, I wended my way over to Keith and Noreen’s for a fabulous supper of smoked duck, freshly baked bread and the biggest salad in Europe, followed by raspberry trifle.  The lot washed down with a couple of glasses of a very acceptable red wine.

If you are interested in risking your luck with Chihuly, the exhibition is free to visit, and runs until 31 March.

It is THE hot ticket in town at the moment.

After having been to see it, I totally understand why.

I hesitate to say this, as I absolutely bloody loved the Grayson Perry exhibition at the British Museum, but I enjoyed Hockney more.

I know.

Madness.

I used to love Hockney in the early Nineties. I fell madly in love with his swimming pool pictures, and the gigantic photo montages of California.  Then, after a while I started finding them a bit clinical.  I got bored.

A few years ago when he started painting the Yorkshire landscape my excitement o meter started pinging after I saw a piece about his work: ‘Bigger Trees Near Warter’.  I loved it, and I had the ambition to see it.

Then I did nothing about that ambition at all.

When this exhibition was advertised I knew I wanted to go, and Gina was an enthusiastic and willing partner in art.

The exhibition is huge, in lots of ways.  There is a room of his past works, in many of which you can see influences that shape his paintings now.  I got excited by the California paintings all over again because of what I can see of them in his recent works.

Then there are rooms and rooms of his Yorkshire paintings.

They are beautiful things.

I thought about so many things as I was going round it was all a bit overwhelming.  At one point I sat on a bench and scribbled some notes because my head was about fit to burst.

Firstly the colours are stunning.  The picture they’re advertising on all the literature is the least of it to be honest.  It reminded me of the work of the Fauvist movement without the sketchiness, and there were definite splashes of Matisse in terms of colour.  It really struck me that the colours are the kind of palette you would associate with works that depict the south of France or Italy, and yet Hockney is using them to show Yorkshire in all its glory, and it really works.

Some of the brush strokes and the skies in particular reminded me of those Van Gogh paintings where the sky is just a whirl of circular lines and marks and movement.  It was trippy, and spectacular.

The other comparison I kept coming back to was to the work of Monet.  I kept thinking about the studies Monet made of the haystacks, and how he went back to them over and over again in different lights and at different times and painted them over and over.  Hockney does this.  He paints the same scene in so many different ways.  Hanging them together you are aware of the cycles of light and nature and such a sense of transition.  They are amazing.

I don’t think that my comparisons do the paintings justice. I am not trying to say that Hockney’s work is a pastiche of all these things.  I’m just giving you my impressions of something that I cannot show you in visuals so that you can perhaps hook into a tiny bit of what it was like to be there.  The works he has created are screamingly new, and totally Hockney.

There is so much life and movement in all of the paintings.  Really, they move, and they move you.  They are vivid, and articulate and bursting off of the canvases.  They roar with colour and life.

Even though they are quite clearly paintings, and the paintings are not even attempting to be realistic in their use of line or colour, you still get an incredible sense that what you are seeing is vividly real, with the emphasis on vivid.  I felt when I was looking at some canvases that they were somehow more photographic than photographs.  You felt you could step into that scene, or that you knew exactly what it was like to be there right at the moment it was painted.

Like the Grayson Perry exhibition that I loved, this exhibition also had a great sense of narrative, which was one of the things I most enjoyed.  There was only one room where I felt the spell of the story break, which was the room dedicated to a study of a religious painting by Claude Lorraine.  I really didn’t like this at all, and if I had anything to moan about it would be this room.  It just didn’t work for me at all.  It interrupted the flow of things, for me.

As well as the more traditional canvases, there is a room which features a huge bank of screens.  They show film footage which Hockney took of the landscapes he was painting.  He set up nine, fixed point cameras in the location he was interested in and captured the land at all times and seasons and lights.  As well as using it as source material for paintings, he also edited and played with them as artworks in their own right.  I found watching them deeply moving.

In another room there are exhibits of his sketch books and the works he did using iPads to capture the scenes he would then commit to canvas.  I loved this room.  The charcoal and pen and ink sketches in particular are just entrancing.

My absolute favourite room however, was the largest room of the whole show.  It features a piece called: ‘The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire 2011′.  Around three walls there are over fifty canvases charting the landscape from January through to the time the spring finally sprung.

The fourth wall is an enormous canvas made up of loads of canvases, which shows the landscape in all its finished Spring finery.

I confess that in this room I actually cried I found the work so glorious.  Awe inspiring is the term I would use.  I was totally immersed in what he had created.  It was joyous.

I want to see this show again, and again, and again.  My greatest desire would be to go back into the Woldgate room and have it all to myself for at least an hour.  It would be bliss.

I cannot recommend this highly enough, and if you want to go here are the details:

Tickets are £15.50 for adults.  Under sevens go free.  Eight to eleven year olds are £3.00 each.  There are various concessions for other demographics.

There is an online booking service. I tried to use it, it had problems and then crashed. I ended up having to call up.  It is very, very popular.  People were queueing back out onto the pavement for returns when we were there.  Be patient, keep trying.

It runs until 9 April, so there is time to see it.

It is, as I say, popular. It is very busy and you will be jostled, I guarantee it.  It is not peaceful, but it is worth putting up with the discomfort.

I cannot do justice in words to this exhibition and what it meant to me.  I cannot even do justice in pictures (which you are not allowed to take).  I bought some postcards and a print.  They do not do it justice either.  You HAVE to be there. You need to be in the middle of the clusters of paintings and their sheer size and scale.  It is like nothing else I have ever been to.

Go.

Luckily I had spent so long in the medieval manuscripts exhibition it was time to meet up with Gina and adjourn to The Wolseley for lunch.

You may recall that I had a little panic about what to wear, given that the restaurant is slightly classier than my usual luncheon joint.

In the end things were decided for me when I woke up to a decided nip in the air, and cancelled the idea of a dress instantly.  I wore my black velvet jeans and teamed it with a vintage silk blouse that used to belong to my mother in law.  I looked presentable, and I felt warm, which was more to the point.

I needn’t have worried.  The staff were very obliging and probably wouldn’t have given two hoots if I had arrived dressed as a giant chicken, which really is just as it should be. Even giant chickens have to be respected, especially if they have the money to pay for their lunch.

There are many things I liked about The Wolseley:

Firstly, the food was good. The ingredients were top notch, the food was hot and tasty and the portions were neither measly nor mahoosive.  Just right, as Goldilocks would say.  I had their home made burger with fries.  I always think the test of whether a burger is going to be good or not is if they ask you how you want it cooked. They did.  Just in case you need to know, I like mine rare.  The meat was tender and tasty. The dill pickle came on the side (which I prefer), the fries were crisp and salty, and there was lashings of mayonnaise.  Good.

The service was good. The staff were friendly and attentive without driving you mad every three seconds.  Everything came when it should have. We didn’t have to remind anyone that we needed anything or were waiting for anything.  Also, even though it was really busy they were quite happy for us to linger for an hour after we had finished eating over our coffee, and didn’t try to move us on or hover until we caved in and paid up.  Top marks.

The menu was an excellent mix of modern and traditional dishes at a good range of prices.  At no point did I have to gasp or think about having a glass of water and the service charge.

My favourite thing was that they served my coffee in what I think of as Viennese style.  It made me very happy.

Years and years ago, before we had children or were married, UE took me to Vienna for a long weekend.  It was somewhere I had always wanted to go.  It was very romantic.

As you can imagine, we ate a lot of cake.  In all the coffee houses where we had our coffee and cake, the coffee always came with a glass of water on the side.  It seems so stupid, but it really impressed me.  Somehow the coffee tasted better.  This is probably balls, but it’s my fantasy and I’m happy with it.  I always order water when I have my coffee, and it is all the fault of the Viennese.

I think, when they delivered my coffee with the little glass of water on the side, and the tea spoon balanced on top of the glass, just like in Vienna, I actually squeaked.

Top marks.

If you arrive in London via Euston or Kings Cross, it is a perfect destination.  Three minutes walk from Kings Cross, and five minutes from Euston.

The British Library is glorious.  It looks rather like something left over from Mao’s revolution on the outside:

But on the inside it is one of my favourite places in the world.

The gothic towers you can see to the right of the picture are St Pancras:

another building I love.

I do not go to the British Library to read (although that would be great).  I go for the fabulous exhibitions they put on, and the fantastic Peyton & Byrne tea room they have there.

Yesterday I went to see: ‘Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination’, which is an exhibition that is running until 13 March.

The exhibition does what it says on the tin, frankly.  It shows over 150 different manuscripts from their royal collection, most of which were donated by George II to the library.  There are prayer rolls, bibles, encyclopaedias, books on royal etiquette and all manner of other documents.

The thing that draws them all together is the exquisite illuminated illustrations.  They really are breathtakingly beautiful.  The colours are rich and jewel like, the illustrations are fine and beautifully rendered, and the detail is phenomenal.

I ended up spending two hours in there, and staggering out at the end dazed and confused, spat back out into the 21st century.

I highly recommend it if you are a fan of things medieval, or just beautiful.

A few things you should know before you go:

It costs £9 per adult to get in. There are concessions for the usual suspects, but not huge ones.

Because of the fragile nature of the books and how easily they could be damaged, the lighting is very low throughout.  The books are individually displayed and you need to give each one close attention.  If you suffer with problems with your eyesight you are going to struggle to make the most of this exhibition.

There really is nothing much but books. There have been a couple of attempts to be slightly interactive, but the books and what is in them are the attraction.  I do NOT recommend this if you have children, unless they are exceptionally patient children with a yen for medieval scholarship.

The British Library recommends booking ahead. They are clearly expecting this to be a big draw.  I did not pre book but I did get there just as the library doors were opening. I was the only one in there for the first thirty minutes, and then it began to fill up.  I absolutely got the most out of the manuscripts as I was able to examine each one without jostling anyone else, or having to queue and I could take my time.  I think I would have been utterly frustrated if I had gone at a busy time, because you really do need to be able to look at things quite hard.  If you want to give the books your full attention try to book at times when it will be relatively empty.

Give yourself enough time to enjoy it.  It is not something you can rush through.

Otherwise, enjoy. I did.

The book that accompanies the exhibition is beautiful and the colour plates are great quality, and there are plenty of them.  I recommend it, but I also recommend that if you don’t want to carry round a really enormous book all day, you order it from the online shop rather than purchasing it on the day, otherwise your arm might snap off with the strain.

As an addendum, for any Bridgewater fans out there (hem hem), they are doing a set of souvenir pots for the exhibition.  I ‘accidentally’ bought a mug.  If you are fancy one, you can only buy them from the British Library, not from the usual Bridgewater stockists.

I have returned, broke, shattered and filthy. My feet are sore and I am exhausted.

It was worth it.

I packed a lot in during my two days away.

Rather than write a blog that is a big long list of things wot I did, including brushing my teeth and having my breakfast, I am going to break it up into manageable chunks for ease of digestion.

Firstly, a public service blog post.

A friend of mine is thinking of going to London soon, and has never been before. She was asking me about some of the basics, like travelling etc, so I thought I would write a post about the stuff I usually leave out when I’m blogging, for her, and anyone else who may be thinking of making a trip in the near future.

Driving:

Regular readers will know that I drove into London for the first time this year.  I did not brave the centre of town because of an event that had closed off most of the middle, but I have been driven through on many an occasion.  Here are my tips.

If you’re nervous of the terrain and traffic, drive to the outskirts where you’re going to encounter traffic  more like traffic you are used to driving in normally.  Find somewhere to leave the car where you won’t incur hideous parking charges and dump the car.  My suggestion is to find somewhere that is within five or ten minutes walk of a tube station or an overground railway station that links to the tube, and then use that.

Stations are generally signposted clearly and are easy to spot, so find that first and then work out from there.

I have done this on numerous occasions with other people and it has always been fine. I have NEVER experienced any violence, or threat of violence in or around London. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, and I’m not advocating you park your car in a side street with no street lights next to a drinking den, but what I am saying is that most places are pretty safe and relatively crime free as long as you are sensible and take the same precautions regarding your personal safety as you would take anywhere else.

From where I live I can drive straight from the bottom of the M1, hook a left by Brent Cross shopping centre and park in Hendon.  If you’re driving in via the M1  Hendon has many advantages if you’re looking for places to park.  There are still roads that don’t have resident parking restrictions, which is pretty rare in London these days.  The roads that do have restrictions usually relax them on weekends, so it is still possible to find good parking.  Hendon has a good tube link into town, you can be in Tottenham Court Road in twenty minutes if that is your heart’s desire.  It also has an overground rail link that you can use underground tickets on, and which will get you into Kings Cross in fifteen minutes.

A word of warning if you’re thinking of parking in Brent Cross.  It shuts very early, and they lock down all the car parks.  If you’re not out by six you’re pretty much screwed, so unless you are absolutely sure of your times, and you know you’re going to make it back there, avoid it like the plague.

Wherever you choose to park in or near London, parking restrictions can vary from road to road, so make sure that you read the sign on the road you are parking on, and make sure you totally understand what it is saying before you abandon the car.

If you’re driving through the middle of London the traffic is fairly hair raising, particularly in places like Oxford Street, Edgware Road, Marble Arch, Park Lane etc.  You need nerves of steel and a great deal of insouciance.

The further in you go, the more expensive your parking will be and the busier the car parks will be.  Do your research BEFORE you drive in.  There are internet sites that specialise in listing available parking in and around London. Make sure you have back up car parks in mind so you don’t have to waste valuable time driving round in ever decreasing circles, screaming and crying if the one you were thinking of using turns out to be full.

On street parking is like hen’s teeth the further into London you get, or if the area you are hoping to park in is very posh.  Do not rely on finding a parking space outside of an authorised car park.  It can be done, but it is rather like discovering Eldorado.

Metered parking is very, very expensive and there is usually a ridiculously short time limit on how long you can stay parked at the roadside, metered or not.  There are generally also restrictions when you can go back to a parking space if you have vacated it.  They are wise to you driving round the corner and then coming back.

There are lots of traffic wardens. Do not even begin to think that you won’t get caught.

Make sure you have planned for, and paid the congestion charge if it applies to you on the day you are going in.

Make sure you leave more than ample time for things like a) sitting in traffic jams, b) roadworks c) diversions and d) getting hopelessly lost even if you do have a sat nav.  Driving in London you ALWAYS need more time than the sat nav, route planner tells you.

Coach

Coach travel is very inexpensive. Most coaches rock up at Victoria at some point, which is not a bad place to start your adventures from.

I avoid coaches like the plague. I did a lot of coach travel as a student, because it was cheap.  This is now why I avoid coach travel. Coaches tend to be full of people who are constrained by budget, and I no longer think it is fun to be shut up in a coach with a load of students.

Also, London traffic is pretty bad. You can spend a lot of your valuable time stuck on a coach, and a coach has to follow a certain route, and is also restricted by size from nipping down a back alley.  So if there is a jam or an accident, you will be stuck, and you will stay stuck.

Train

Trains can be surprisingly nifty.  There are always going to be problems with public transport; leaves on the line, etc, but if you’re not driving yourself this is probably the best way to do it.

If you are going en masse, a family rail ticket is a fantastic investment. They are relatively cheap and they offer huge, and I mean huge, discounts.  I cannot recommend them highly enough. They are easy to get and last you a year.

Pre booking your ticket a few weeks in advance is the best way to get reduced fares otherwise.  Making sure you are not travelling in peak commuter times also brings the price of your ticket down hugely.  My return ticket for this weekend cost me £30, which was excellent.

The only down side of travelling on weekends is that the train lines reduce the price of the tickets then because they also reduce the regularity of the service, and quite often do engineering works on the line, so you may experience more  delays than you would in the week.

I travelled into Euston from Rugby train station yesterday. It took fifty minutes non stop. This is less time than some people spend commuting across London every week day. It is a quick and easy journey.

I could have gone from Leicester to Kings Cross.  This also takes fifty minutes.

Both stations are equidistant from where I live. I chose Rugby because it costs me £3 per day to park my car there, as opposed to nearly £20 in Leicester. No contest.

Travelling around in London

Buy an Oyster Card.  An Oyster card is like a credit card for London transport.  You top it up, either at the machines in the stations, or at the manned ticket offices.  When you go through the ticket barriers you swipe it against a touch pad and it automatically removes the amount of money for your journey from your card.

My advice is that if you can pre buy your Oyster card before you get into a main line railway station, then do it.  Keep it topped up so that you are never at a main line station with a need to either buy an Oyster card or top one up.  Mainline stations can get ridiculously busy, particularly Kings Cross, which is where the European trains come in too.  You can (and I have) spend up to half an hour queuing to top up your card at busy times.  There is nothing like the smug feeling of being able to just sashay on through the crowds and sweep onto a waiting train.

Oyster cards can also be used on all buses, some overland trains and some of the water taxi services.

My advice is that if you are in a hurry to get from A to B, always use a tube train.  Buses are grand, but they will be slow, particularly in high density tourist areas.

Children are free on London transport.  You do not need any sort of card for them. You just find the entrance and exit gates that are used for people with luggage, and sweep your children through with you as luggage.

There will always be a reduced service on the tube system at the weekends.  It is when they do their repair and engineering works.  They system of updating passengers as to what is happening is becoming increasingly sophisticated, and is easy to see, easy to hear and regularly updated throughout the day. Pre planned works and closures will be advertised on London Transport’s website so it is good to check it before you set off.  If you get stuck en route there will be a member of staff somewhere who can tell you how to work around station closures.

I expect there are apps on the iPhone for this kind of thing too.

As you would expect, as you get into the centre of the tube system, the tube stations are nearer together and tube lines cross all over the place.  Tottenham Court Road tube was shut for some time recently due to engineering works.  If you need to get to Tottenham Court Road it helps to know that Leicester Square station is less than five minutes walk away, or you could get off at Goodge Street station, which is also five minutes walk away.  There are usually alternative routes that are easy to use if you are moving about centrally.

Obviously, the further out from the centre you go, the more spread out the stations are and you will have to take advantage of replacement bus services etc.  I have always found station staff very willing to help with advice in situations where I am a little lost and confused, so nil desperandum.

I was trying to explain, very badly, about the menacing stone owls they have in great profusion there.

I don’t think I did a very good job of it.

When I say that there were hundreds of them, I am not exaggerating.

I now have photographic evidence.

I know it doesn’t look impressive, but honestly, there were hundreds of clumps of these things, EVERYWHERE.

It was like that episode of Dr. Who, the one with the stone angels where everyone shouts: ‘Don’t blink!’ and the angels get closer and closer with their evil, stony fangs.

Only in this case it would be their evil, stony beaks.

It’s my mum’s birthday next weekend.  Maybe I should buy her a clump of stone owls, and then position them outside the living room window, so they can stare in  through the foliage.

‘DON’T HOOT!’

The joy of blogging relies on friendships that are built up over time through comments, shares and thoughtful readership of the work of other bloggers, who in turn, often return the favour.  It really is a community built on communication and mutual regard, and I think that’s fairly special.

Blogging friendships occur at lots of different levels and intensities, just as they do in real life. Sometimes they spill over into real life.  Sometimes they stay virtual, but that in no way diminishes their power.

I read a lot of blogs.  There are a lot of interesting people out there, and regular readers will know about my absolute favourites, who I return to again and again.

There are other bloggers who I read who are newer to me, but who I know are set to become some of my ‘go to’ favourites. I have either found them through the recommendation of other bloggers I trust, or because they have commented on my blog and I have dropped over to see what they do. Sometimes I keep dropping over.

This is what happened with my friend Alex over at Odd Socks and Pretty Frocks. Alex had been commenting on my blog on and off for a while, and last Autumn I popped over to see her blog, and stayed.  One day she posted something I knew Tilly would love, and I couldn’t wait for her to get home from school so I could share it with her.  Tilly did love it, and stayed too.

Alex has just written a fantastic blog post in which she has been very, very kind about my blog, as well as two other top drawer bloggers I am honoured to share blog space with, Tania Kindersley at Backwards in High Heels, and Just Me.

I want to reciprocate.

She deserves it.

She mentioned she had written it in a throwaway comment, and that it might not be as exciting as being mentioned by LLG.

This is because she is far too humble for her own good.

Alex is a dynamic, interesting blogger.  Her posts are well written, well constructed and eye catching.  I love her photography, and her use of colour and images is totally fresh and exciting.

I love the fact that her blog posts are little delights that always manage to surprise me.

Her writing makes me feel nostalgic for the days when I loved fashion as much as I love wearing pyjamas now, and I find myself inspired to take more sartorial risks after having read one of her posts.

She recommends excellent books, fabulous cafes, and shit hot shoes (Irregular Choice are a new fetish I blame entirely on her influence).  She is also a firm fan of the Charity Shop haul, which is something I wholeheartedly approve of and celebrate with her.

Not only is she a damn good blogger herself, but she has also introduced me to the wonder of Vintage Vixen, who I have a small but perfectly formed girl crush on.

Alex, thank you.  Your regard means a lot more than you think.

I will be sans children and husband again.

I know.  I am lucky.  Please do bear in mind that I did four days at the coal face of lone parenting last weekend. And I had a sad, ill small boy for the entirety of that time, and missed an evening drinking champagne with my friend Lizzie.  As such I feel I am entitled to as much time off as I can guilt my husband into giving me, and I have absolutely no shame about milking it for all it is worth.

I am going to meet with my fabulous friend Gina, who lights up my life.  We are going for lunch at The Wolseley.  I have never been, although I have written about it before.

In the afternoon we are rolling across the road to the Royal Academy to see the much lauded David Hockney exhibition.

If we are feeling a little snackish after this, we will go to Fortnum & Mason for tea. I am torn as to whether to buy treats there or in Laduree across in Burlington Arcade to take to my friends Keith and Noreen, who are providing supper, a bed and a surrogate family for the evening.

On Sunday I have the whole day in London to myself.  I have decided nine trillion times what I will do with my time. I have settled on nothing as yet.  I am not worried that I will be bored.

Far from it.

Apart from explaining why I will be offline for the next day or two, and anticipating gluttony and excess I wanted to mention my plans for a reason.

I have always known that I am very like my mum in lots of ways.  Just how much became apparent today.

I mentioned in my last post about my total sartorial failure.  Add to this the fact that I am heavier than I have been since I gave birth to Tallulah, and that half of my things do not fit me any longer, I am hard pushed to scrub up nicely.

I don’t usually mind, except that I am going to The Wolseley for my lunch, and the last time I went to an establishment type restaurant (Simpsons in the Strand) they got a trifle aerated about my clothing (my top was too low cut for their liking), and it was all rather aggravating.

I had the morning to myself, before meeting my friend Diane for lunch (which helped the diet not one whit).  I decided to do an emergency dash to T.K. Maxx to see if I could find something suitable.  My big dilemma being that I am travelling light, and need to pack savvy and warm, as well as smart.  I felt that when I went in, I was demanding quite a lot from an item of clothing.

I searched the racks for an hour before leaving the shop with this item:

I am sure you will agree that I will look absolutely stunning in this.  It’s so big it fits Derek, whose head you can just make out, peeping over the top, so I should probably be able to stretch it to fit nicely as long as I wear some sturdy undergarments.

It reminded me of the time my mum had to go shopping for a very flash wedding she had received an invitation to.  She set off at nine in the morning bound for Leicester with a look of determination on her face. She came home in the evening with two, huge bags on the back seat.

They contained two, beautiful standard lamps from Habitat.

As you can well imagine, she looked a picture.

I fell into it almost by accident, ended up with a randomly silly blogging handle because someone else was setting up my account and asked me to choose something on the spot, and was assigned WordPress because that was what my friend knew about.

It turns out that all this was a very happy accident. I have been blessed with five years of blogging that have given me very little grief, and a great deal of benefit.

When I talk about the benefits of blogging I am, of course, referring to non financial benefits.  Anyone looking at this blog or reading more than one blog post will know that I am clearly not in it for financial gain.

I cannot tell you how rich it makes me feel in other ways, and I would never want that to change.

I have made great friendships, both virtual and real. I have been given succour in my hours of need, and people to celebrate with in my moments of jubilation.

I have learned many new things; including how to get a stuck lock working when your key won’t turn properly (thank you Mrs. Jones), and where to source dungarees for a ten year old at very short notice (Home Office Mum you are a genius).  I have been given gifts, and recipes, and time and affection and a sympathetic ear when I needed to roar.  I have laughed until I have wept at the things you have shared with me. I have been touched by your confidences and felt happier for knowing you all.  My world would be an infinitely duller place if it weren’t for all the lovely people who comment and e-mail, and point me to stuff they know I will love.

I have found that contrary to popular belief, people are generous, and kind and thoughtful.  I have found that people will go that extra mile and then some.

I know I have written in this vein before, but I don’t think it hurts every now and again to mention the good stuff, especially when other bloggers are launching anti blog bitching campaigns (which I don’t have anything against, by the way).  I just think it is important to leaven things by being able to tell a blogging success story in terms of being absolutely bloody delighted with it all.

Today, again, I have been struck by an act of generosity by another blogger which has swept me off my feet.

Liberty London Girl (Sasha Wilkins), who you know I love as a blogger, and have a ridiculous passion for as a person (because she is a genuinely delightful human being, not because I want to lick her eyeball or anything), was kind enough to mention my blog in her online chat about blogging today which she hosted on behalf of Red Magazine Online

She was asked which bloggers she read herself and answered:

I read a lot of very random blogs. Most of-f all like blogs that give me a window into someone else’s world, as I find that fascinating. There’s a list on LLG of my top blogs to follow in 2010 which has everything from a woman in an African outpost to a Finnish expat in London. I do love KatyBoo A LOT

It is now into its third series, and I have a confession to make.

I have watched every single episode so far.

It is my guilty pleasure.  I know I only usually watch programmes about baking or things with Kirstie and Phil in them, but there you go.  I cannot help myself.  It is a total addiction.

Every single week I end up in tears when the baby is born.  Every, single, solitary week without fail.

I may not like the couple, I may find it frustrating, complicated, emotionally exhausting, but I cannot help but cry when that baby is born.

Tears of happiness.

In a big, girly, blubbering snotty way.

Like mummypinkwellies, I did not have the births of my dreams.  I did not suffer what she went through, and I am in no way drawing comparisons or trying to elicit sympathy, but the things I hoped and wished would happen when the time to have my babies came did not happen.

And it was a shock.

The first birth was the worst birth.  This was mainly because up to that point it had never occurred to me that I might not get to at least partially attempt to do things the way I wanted.  Instead I was so comprehensively rail roaded, the whole thing was a misery from beginning to end.

But on a positive note, I have three, healthy, thriving children and I am very, very grateful.

There are many others who are not so lucky, and my heart bleeds for them.

Nearly thirteen years down the line, I do not get angry any more that things did not go the way I wanted.  I think I would have, in the early years.  I suspect I may not have been able to watch this programme then.  I would have been too messed up about it all.

The passage of time has allowed me to make peace with what happened to me.  Writing about it here helped a lot too, way back when I decided to explore how I ended up having my children.

Now I watch with a kind of fascination as other couples go through this most complex and emotional of journeys.  I am stunned they let the cameras in, and slightly jealous of their bravery.  I admit that I do find watching it emotionally exhausting.  Sometimes it makes me laugh.  Sometimes it makes me sad.

Sometimes I am sad for the couples, who are obviously not all in the best place to be going through everything they are experiencing. Sometimes I feel sad, because happy as I am with my three, I still sometimes wish for another (only briefly before sanity kicks in), and know that it isn’t going to happen for so many reasons.

This evening though, I was humbled and privileged to watch the episode that aired yesterday.  It featured a couple called Trish and Steve.

Trish and Steve had been together for twenty five years.  This was their first baby.

Trish had been in a road traffic accident at the age of thirteen.  She was in a coma for weeks, and when she came out of it she sustained lasting brain damage which left her mentally and physically impaired.

She met Steve in a church choir when she was fifteen and he was 18.  She asked him out because she knew that as soon as she saw him, he was the one for her. They had been together ever since.

What struck me, as I watched them was their dignity, their bravery (you cannot tell me that they had not weathered a great deal together to get to this point), and  their total love for each other.

Trish was wonderful.  She was extremely affectionate, utterly frank and totally, devastatingly charming.  Steve spoke about how happy she was, and she certainly seemed so.  He talked about how he wasn’t sure if it was an effect of the damage she had sustained, but that if it was, it was basically a very wonderful place to be in, and you couldn’t help but agree.

What I liked most about Trish though, was that she was completely open about how she felt, and for the most part totally fearless.  She was so in love, and so excited to be having a baby, and the only things that worried her were that she didn’t know how to have a baby (and let’s face it, who does until you’ve done it?), and a worry that someone might try to take the baby away from her because she was disabled.

She needn’t have worried on that score.  The midwives were, to a woman, united behind giving this woman the best experience of birth she could possibly have. They championed her all the way, allayed her fears and cared for her with a ferocity that brooked no nay sayers.

Steve was adamant that any help that Trish received once the baby was born would be to help her to learn how to be a better mum, not to take charge of the baby, or take the baby away from her.  He was determined that she could and would be the best mother that their child could ever hope for, and his belief in her did not waver for an instant.  I thought he was a pretty magnificent husband, and if he is as proud a champion of his daughter as he is his wife, she will be one of the luckiest children in the world.

When their daughter, Elizabeth was born, everyone was in tears, including me, on my sofa, wrapped in my blanket, willing them to succeed in everything they set out to do together as a family.  In between the tears you could hear Trish saying: ‘I love you, Elizabeth. I love you. I love our baby.’  Her voice was shaking with emotion.

When Steve reached in to kiss his wife and daughter she looked up at him and said: ‘Can we take our baby home now please?’

And you just wanted him to say; ‘Yes’ and scoop them both up and run for the hills.

And after a slight delay that is what he did.

I really hope they get to be the family they want to be.  They deserve it.