I better post something. Anything. If I don’t then I might as well decommission this blog. The problem is that when you’ve taken such a long break from blogging you do feel as if you should have some earth shattering reason for not having posted for a while and I don’t.
So I’m posting something. This. It’s not much but it’ll do for a start.

In the south of France…busy swimming and sunning and sleeping and eating (because everything here revolves around food) and thinking. Will write more later if I can bear to drag myself away from the beach, the bed and the dinner table.

It’s not.

Not at all.

But seeing as how FN is standing over there whistling in a very intimidating manner (no really she is – she’s just on the other side of the page) and CB was so bored she took to debating matters philosophical (before letting her hamster run amok over the African Violets) and Sal got so fed up he actually visited Scotland (which you need to be pretty fed up to do) and Bering has developed an antipathy to the word postman - I thought I’d better write a few lines before you all start hammering on the door brandishing pitchforks.

The problem is that when you take a break from blogging for as long as I just have then it gets really difficult to start up again. You feel as if you should write something brilliant and literary and funny and intelligent and quite frankly at 8.45 on a Wednesday night I’m capable of not being brilliant, literary, funny or intelligent but making sure that dinner (tandoori chicken) doesn’t burn (too badly).

So here you go. Finally. It’s not a new post. It’s not great literature. It’s not even interesting but its here and it doesn’t have the word postman in the title. Promise faithfully to have a proper post here soon…

Now, I’ll settle down and see if herebe really is going to break his record for arriving later than he said he would. He’s almost three hours late already – just another twenty minutes and he’s got an all new PB.

UPDATE

Ok, so it’s now 22.56 Herebe didn’t make it a personal best but - we’re three bottles of red down, the chicken (after 2 hours in the oven) still isn’t cooked properly but who cares cos the guitars are out. Looks like this is going to be a long late night…wish you were all here.

Yeah, I’m still (sort of) here. It’s just that this giving up my job malarkey (one of those new years resolutions I wasn’t going to make) in order to have more time to spent doing the important things in life - like sleeping and painting and writing and reading and oh…I don’t know…actually getting out of the apartment more than once a fortnight - has meant that I’m spending more time than even at the computer. Partly that’s because of the malteser down the side of the shift key fuck up and then the shutting down of illustrator when it was saving an incredibly complicated piece of work that had taken four days to complete to my satisfaction which meant that the damn thing didn’t save and had to be done all over again.

The redrawing of a freehand logo (the original of which I dashed off in twenty minutes without any prior sketches and the memory of which has now taken on genius of a da vinci’esque magnitude) and which I’ve spent the past week trying to duplicate has not met with success either. My new business - which doesn’t officially exist yet because although I have a name I dont have a logo, business cards, website, portfolio (well one that isn’t in corrupted files that I can’t bloody open) - did get its first job. Obviously this has meant that although I’ve spent the past few years blithely applying gradient shading to everything in sight and (and I quote my previous job description) “giving thing the wow factor!” (i.e applying gradient shading to everything in sight) any and all ideas, self-confidence and technical ability vanished like snow in the sun and so I spent a fun week desperately attempting to get something down which didn’t (to my mind anyway) look like total shit. (You’ll be pleased to know - or at least I was pleased to know - that the client, oh that sounds so much like I know what I’m doing - loved the drafts I sent through and has picked one!)

So as you can imagine. Life here has been really fun recently (especially for F who has had to put up with me). I look like one of those Hanna Barbara cartoons, you know the ones where the character gets hit over the head with something heavy and the whites of their eyes are filled with scarlet concentric circles? Admittedly I don’t have the concentric circles, just one line in each eye but the fact that the lines are horizontal stripes of scarlet which sear through both iris and pupil means that they do a sterling job of terrifying any Jehovah’s witnessess who might come calling.

On the plus side and as I always say, when the going gets tough…the tough go shopping. I’ve been doing a lot of shopping recently (thank god retail therapy is now available online) and just as soon as I finish typing this out I’m off up town to do some more (well just as soon as I have a bath and get dressed that is, at the moment I’m still in my pj’s (stripey flannelette).

Anyway, the point of this post was A. to get back to blogging again because you’ve no idea how difficult it is to restart after a break and B. More importantly, to let you all know that my dearest and most wonderful Jgirl has now (finally) started selling her jewellery online. Her shop is called Executive Gothic and every piece is a one-off, never to be repeated, handmade design. Personally I think her prices are way too cheap but as it means I can buy more of I’m not really complaining. It’s amazing stuff - go and check it out!

Just don’t even ask. Who would have thought a piece of malteser stuck down the side of a shift key could cause so much devastation?
Radio silence until I redo all the work that the bloody thing managed to delete (Probably Monday)