Parking Tickets, Torture & Dubya

Firstly I want to rant a the fact I got ANOTHER parking ticket on Friday. Despite that fact that I was on the scooter, I was for some reason best known to Kensington and Chelsea expected to pay and display, even thought there is nothing to secure the ticket to the bike and therefore nothing to prevent any Tom, Dick or Harry from picking the (very soggy due to the horrendous rain) parking ticket from the bike and placing it in their own vehicle. No other local borough expects you to do so, realising of course that it is bloody ridiculous to expect it, and that you might as well insist that every car displays a live ostrich on the dashboard. 50 bloody quid. That's £250 that various London boroughs have had out of me over the past 8 months or so. Naturally I will contest it so keep your fingers crossed and if any, say, trainee lawyers (like, for example, my sister Jenny or my friend Rosie) would like to fight my case, I'd be delighted to let them do it for practice...

Secondly, you'll be pleased to know I made it to yoga yesterday. You might be pleased to know it, but I on the other hand am not, seeing as I'm in AGONY today. Clearly I hadn't realised how flexible I had become and having 6 weeks off has sent me sliding back down the snake to square 1. Muscles I had no idea existed are hurting like never before.

So yesterday we set off for deepest darkest Kent to attend our friend's Fahrenheit 9/11 Anti-George Bush evening. I had arranged for us to stay in an Oast house as a surprise for Tudor, who played along spectacularly by complimenting every Oast house we passed on the way down and saying how much he liked them... This is where we stayed:

A Little Bit of Oast

We had a top evening, even if the film, which Tudor & I'd seen before when it first came out, is a little depressing. Everyone should see it to make sure we all know a twat Dubya is. Guy & Sue, who's do it was, were the consummate hosts, providing lots of food for us to hoover and their kids were absolutely gorgeous as usual. For some reason I didn't get a picture of Sam (age 3), who is very lovely indeed but I did get one of Connor (age 5), who we have always referred to as Two Buttons. This is because he isn't just as cute as A button...



Finally today, after a lovely breakfast in the Oast house cooked by Marianne who had FIVE homebirths (count 'em!) we headed over to Jan & Barry's for the day. We visited the Bursledon Windmill and then headed over to Hamble to look at the sea. On the way, Barry urged Tudor to slow down on a particular stretch of road where the police always hide on a Sunday to with their hairdryers waiting to catch drivers over the speed limit of 30mph. At this point, Tudor realised that this was the stretch of road that, on the way to Barry & Jan's, he had put his foot down to overtake all the ridiculously slow Sunday drivers who were ambling along at 30mph...oops. Only time will tell whether Tudes got away with it. We'll keep you posted.