Salsa to Sleep

My word, this bed is bloomin' comfy! It's like sleeping on a cloud... My tip? Buy a cheap 13 tog hollowfibre duvet - I got mine for £8 at Tesco - and put it on top of the mattress (under the sheet). It adds a drop of sheer luxury for next to no cost! A similar mattress pad at Ikea would set you back £60 for a double, £80 for a king...

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I went to my Salsa class last night - it was packed! A whole load of new beginners and I, three lessons in, have now moved up to the Improvers class. I'm told (she said feeling just a little bit big-headed) that I'll be in the advanced class in no time at all... It's funny, every week between classes I think to myself 'It sounds so naff, going to Salsa classes. It is a bit naff actually. Maybe I won't go next week' and then when Tuesday comes around I drag myself off, telling myself that it's better than going to the gym, and find I really enjoy it! I mean, when you watch two really good Salsa dancers together, the whole thing is so fluid, they seem to ebb and flow around each other, and I look at them thinking: I want to be able to do that! The women, no matter what their size, shape or age, ooze sensuality and the blokes ain't too bad neither! This week I had a new instructor called Ben, who was...Chinese?...and had been Salsa dancing for 15 years. It's amazing how easy it is to dance with a good partner. If they lead you, you effortlessly follow, producing moves you had no idea you knew how to do! As someone who's always considered themselves, well, if not having 2 left feet exactly, then a pretty uncoordinated dancer, it's gratifying to be able to twist and twirl your way around the dancefloor. So I think I'll keep it up for now...

Lord of the Bedroom

My lovely friends Linda and Karl bought me a bed for a housewarming present (for those who got me a plant or a candle then don't feel bad, I was also their midwife when their beautiful daughter Chiara was born a couple of months ago so they were being extra-specially nice) and brought it round on Sunday. Unfortunately, it turns out that Ikea sell the slatted base that the mattress goes on separately, so I couldn't make it up and use it then, so I had planned to go there yesterday to buy that myself. In the morning, I thought I'd just check and see if there was anything else I might need and discovered that Linda & Karl had only picked up box one of two! So had to go to Croydon via Wandsworth to get the receipt (which Linda had to fish out of the bin) so I could go and get the second box. They didn't have the slatted base I wanted in stock so had to get the more expensive one. Managed to get it all in the car, along with all the incidentals I picked up along the way which came to about double what I had estimated. Why does that always happen at Ikea?

Spent last night making it all up - it took HOURS! Supposedly the bed was a two man job, so thank goodness I'm a woman! A bit of clever jiggery pokery resting the various bits on boxes and so on and I managed to get it all together. Then the slatted base. Well bloody hell. Short of planing the wood myself it couldn't havebeen more difficult and because it had some fancy make-the-bed-firmer-or-softer bit in the middle it was really bloody complicated. The instructions, unusually for Ikea, were hopeless, they made no sense at all. I basically made it up as I went along. Seems to work though! So finally, for the first time since the end of November when I moved in, I got to sleep in a proper bed last night!

No one can say I'm not trying. As well as going to Salsa dancing lessons on a Tuesday night, I've just joined a book group. I'll have a good time if it bloody kills me.

Gay Cowboys Rock!

Anyone who knows me well knows I have a fondness - a weakness if you like - for a bit of boy on boy action. So it probably won't come as a surprise to you that I saw Brokeback Mountain today. Woooah boy! That is one sexy fillum, full of my very favourite blend of long lingering looks, a deep rooted passion/denial continuum and some rather explicit sex scenes between two gorgeous blokes. Yum. I must admit I was somewhat taken aback to see an elderly indian couple sitting in the next row - maybe they thought they were going to see Jarhead?

Hello again...

I'm back - again, I guess. Just can't keep away now, can I?

Oh how I'd love this blog to be all about giving you the odd little amusing tit-bit that allows you a little insight into my lovely life but sadly, I just can't do that anymore. Instead, I'll have to content myself with saying what I've been up to and a little of how I'm feeling - very sorry if it's too morose for you! I don't even know if anyone is going to read this anymore anyway but there's something cathartic about it for me...

So here's me at the moment, some good some bad:

• I have moved into my lovely flat (yes, the one I was about to lose when I last posted) - hurrah! It is just as lovely as I hoped, it really is. It's very small but I do relish getting up and pottering around in my own, clean and tidy (ahem) flat, looking out over my beautiful view (it's over the Broadwater Lake in Weybridge) and spotting as many different birds as I can. Who'd have thought I'd turn into Bill Oddie?
• My divorce from Tudor has been finalised. Yes, it was all very quick (Tudor's wish). I feel just awful about it but nothing I can do. If there were, I would. I can only hope that things will get better one day.
  
• I've finally got broadband! That's why I'm back etc. etc. And it's WIRELESS too, so don't I just feel like the cat who got the proverbial.
• Just been on holiday to Lanzarote with my Dad, my step-mum, Jackie and her mother Gisela. No jokes about saddos in their 30s who go on holiday with their parents, thanks. We were all ill - me with a cold that I've STILL got and have had since 27th December, the bugger - but Dad was the worst and ended up being admitted to hospital whilst we were out there with the beginnings of pneumonia and (don't laugh) gout. Not connected but both occurred simultaneously for sheer convenience. He was told to give up smoking, red wine and red meat, which he did...for a whole day. Way to go Dad!
  
• Christmas was bloody awful. Really really awful. Well, that's unfair, Christmas Day was really rather nice, thanks to my friends Phillip and Zoe, who rescued me from spending it alone by inviting me over. But the Christmas period was just the worst I've ever had and far worse than I thought I could be. When you go from being someone who enjoys the whole thing thoroughly to being someone who finds themselves sitting on Christmas Eve with the phone in one hand, the number for the Samaritans in the other, crying so hard you think your eyes might fall out, it's bound to shock you a little. I saw in the New Year sobbing in my sister's bathroom too. Well, I guess next year's can only be better...
• All this means that I have a very flexible social calendar at the moment so if anyone fancies getting together for a drink, I'm pretty sure I'll be free. Try me!