As someone who hates queueing in any form (except when it's a triple word score on a Scrabble board), but especially when the queue in question is for a stinky portaloo while my favourite band is playing in the next field, I think that this is perhaps the best thing ever invented.

I want the purple version, for extra wrongness.

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If this blog has been rather quiet of late, blame the fact that I am mind-meltingly busy at the moment. This is because as well as being the phone-monkey for Clerkenwell Towers, I have recently also been promoted to the post of office manager. But they still want me to wrangle the telephones, natch, as they are too cheap to hire a receptionist. And the finance guy recently left, so I'm handling the accounts as well. Also, the H.R. lady is in Turkey for two weeks so I shall be dealing with recruitment too. Wot larks.

At this rate, in a fortnight's time I shall either be (a) dead or (b) the sole remaining employee of Clerkenwell Towers. Or possibly both. Serves me right for being efficient (or a pushover).

My holiday in Portugal now seems oh so very far away. Oh vinho verde, where are you when I need you?

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So, it's my birthday today and I'm only at my computer because some vestigial sense of propriety made me stop drinking Pimms in the sunshine and come back to check my emails before I went off to drink more Pimms and get more sunburnt. I've been in the pub since 1:30pm. We at Clerkenwell Towers don't give two hoots about Friday afternoons.

Oh, but it's been a lovely day - even if you discount the hours of drinking in the blazing sunshine - because look what greeted me when I came into the office:

Balloons

Awww. How nice is that? There was a big bouquet of flowers too. I felt like Sally Field at the Oscars: "You like me, you really like me!"

And I'm wearing my red shiny birthday shoes. Everything is good.

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How many pair of shoes do you have? Out of those pairs, how many do you wear more than a few times a year?
Submitted by fightinggale.

An embarrassing number. Let me see, off the top of my head... (deep breath):

1.Blue suede heels
2.Black suede peep-toe heels (with golden birds on the ankles)
3.Black patent t-bar heels
4.Black patent peep-toe heels
5.Black leather pointed heels
6.Tan peep-toe platform heels
7.Red patent mary jane heels
8.Magenta suede platform heels
9.Green suede heels
10.Brown suede mary jane heels
11.White leather mary jane heels
12.Bronze court sandals
13.Grey suede pointed heels
14.Red wedge sandals
15.White wedge sandals
16.Brown wedge sandals
17.Tan wedge sandals
18.Pink silk heels
19.Black leather flats
20.Black patent flats
21.Green leather flats
22.Red canvas pumps
23.White canvas pumps
24.Silver ballet pumps
25.Bronze ballet pumps
26.Green Converse high-tops
27.Cream Acupuncture trainers
28.Black Diesel trainers
29.Stripy black & white sneakers
30.Red Stan Smith sneakers
31.Reebok running shoes
32.Black Havaiana flip-flops
33.Pink Havaiana flip-flops
34.Green Birkenstocks
35.Ugg boots
36.Cowboy boots
37.Black high-heeled knee-high boots
38.Brown high-heeled knee-high boots
39.Black shoe-boots
40.Grey suede mid-calf boots

I think there may be more, but I'm losing the will to live. I clearly need to change my name to Imelda Marcos. Or maybe I just need one of those shoe-closets from the film "Overboard". Where's Kurt Russell when you need him...?

Edit: These beauties are my latest purchase, number 7 on the list:

Birthday shoes

And, for Kate and Foxy, here are the shoes I wear when I absolutely have to have golden birdies fluttering around my ankles:

Birdy

Gee whizz, I love shoes. Love love love 'em.

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Oh God, oh God. Why? WHY? My poor, poor London. We don't deserve you.

(Let's all hope and pray that he makes some terrible, unspinnable gaffe - like screwing Vladimir Putin's latest squeeze and then making a racist joke about it - that means he has to resign within the year....)

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It's been hectic this morning - our very demanding CEO is over from the USA, some travel plans have gone awry, I've been doing ten things at once and I've not even eaten breakfast yet. Which is probably why I just answered a ringing phone with, "Good morning, my darling." The salesman on the other end was most taken aback.

It's the office equivalent of calling your teacher "Daddy". Oh, the shame.

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So I decided to surf the zeitgeist and follow the example of my esteemed colleagues by allowing Paul McKenna and his strangely gravelly voice to mess with my mind.

It is amazing. Really quite mindblowing, actually. I mean, the theory behind it is so simple (hungry? Then eat. And eat what you want. But stop when you're satisfied. It ain't rocket science, is it?), but I think what is so groundbreaking - for me at least - is the idea of being able to eat WHATEVER I WANT. For someone who has been on some sort of diet since she was in her early teens, this is beyond wonderful. I've started taking sugar in my tea again, instead of those repulsive little tabs of Hermesetas. Skimmed milk, begone! Hello there butter, did you miss me? Bread is once more my friend. I am once again on speaking terms with pasta, after more than a year in the wilderness. And potatoes have returned from exile at last, at last.

Of course, what with all the delicious carbohydrates I was tipping down my gullet, I was naturally a bit sceptical about how effective it all was. Okay, I felt lighter and my clothes felt a little looser, but I was eating POTATOES and PASTA and surely they were the devil's carbs? In addition to which, I was drinking wine and beer with gay abandon and I wasn't going to the gym five times a week, so there was no way I was going to lose weight, right?

Wrong. I got on the scales this morning for the first time in two weeks and blow me down with a feather if I haven't gone and lost five pounds. This is officially a miracle, definitely on a par with all that water-into-wine business.

(I have to say though, the trance CD that accompanies the book is inadvertently hilarious. I am thinking specifically of the point where PMcK gets you to start counting backwards from three hundred, then says "That's right" in the sort of voice porn stars use).

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Hello everybody. Here is the news.

*shuffles paper, looks to camera*

So, I decided to bite the bullet and apply to do a PGCE in September. The application went off on Monday and now I must wait, breath baited, for an interview. I'm hoping to get in at the Institute of Education in Holborn (close to the Brunswick Centre, Lucy! Eeee!), but it's a really good college and I think my chances are quite low because I've left it so late to apply. My second choice is the Met University, which is still pretty good and conveniently situated down the road from my house, so I wouldn't be crying if I got in there instead. And if I did it would be hilarious because that is where Trilby is doing his PGCE and we would be students together in some sort of weird North London version of "Peggy Sue Got Married".

In preparation for this huge, life-changing decision, and to reassure myself that I wasn't making a hideous mistake, I arranged to spend a day at a Hackney primary school sitting in on my friend's Year Two class. Come the day I was apprehensive for three very good reasons:
(1) I was going to be spending a day with a room full of seven-year-olds;
(2) I was going to be spending a day with a room full of seven-year-olds in Hackney;
(3) I had to get to the school for 8:15am.

I think of all of the above, it was number 3 that horrified me most. 8:15am? That's the time I normally get out of bed. To get to Hackney for 8:15am meant getting up at 6:30am. Worryingly, my friend the teacher seemed to think that getting up at 6:30am constituted a lie-in.

However, once I'd got to the school and drunk three cups of coffee and a cup of tea in quick succession, I felt ready and able to face the kids. Now, I don't know many children. Obviously, I was a child a long time ago, but that doesn't really count. As a result, my mental image of your average seven-year-old was of some huge, hulking, spitting monster, only interested in happy-slapping grannies and talking in txtspk.

It turns out, seven-year-olds are CUTE. Mind-bendingly, heart-wrenchingly cute. Even the naughty ones are cute. They want to hold your hand and accidentally call you "mummy" (one little girl, Andrea, called me "mummy" so many times that her friend asked her if I actually was her mummy, to which she replied "Yes". A-DOR-A-BLE).

So I spent the day helping the kids out with numeracy and literacy. The latter was more fun (I've always hated maths), and in my eagerness to promote the joys of reading I used some frankly rather underhand tactics.

Mrs Robinson:     So do you all enjoy reading?

Cute children:     Yes!

Small boy:           No!

Mrs Robinson:      You don't like reading?

Small boy:            I like football.

Mrs Robinson:      Do you? Do you like Thierry Henry?

Small boy:            Yes.

Mrs Robinson:      Well, Thierry Henry LOVES reading.

Small boy:            Does he?

Mrs Robinson:      Oh yes. He's a big reader.

Small boy:            I like Christiano Ronaldo more.

I finished the day tired but very happy, and convinced that the great Become A Teacher Plan is not une idee chimerique but actually something that I would really enjoy. I hope I haven't left it too late to get a place on a PGCE course this year, because I want to do this NOW. So it's fingers crossed time, folks.

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Oooh! Oooh! Etiquette is coming to London!

By "Etiquette", I don't mean using the correct fork at supper or giving up your seat to a pregnant lady. Such things have long since been banished from the Smoke. No, I mean Etiquette, which is playing at the Barbican on 8th & 9th March. It was on at the Edinburgh Festival last year and I went to do it twice (oh yes, you do it, you don't watch it... I don't want to say any more than that for fear of ruining the fun) and it was twenty types of brill. Get a friend (ideally of the opposite sex) and have a go - it only takes half an hour and it's FAB. And it only costs £1.50 each. Woo!

Also, there is going to be a Big Ukelele Bash (ukeleles provided!) on the Saturday at 2pm, to which I am bringing my little pal Enid:

Uke

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So, remember how a while back I discovered that I was allergic to cherries as a result of oral allergy syndrome? Remember how pissed off I was?

Well, I just ate a banana and now my mouth and throat are itching like crazy.

Dear Lord. It is becoming increasingly evident that MY BODY DOES NOT WANT ME TO EAT FRUIT. I tell you, if I find out I'm allergic to pineapple then my immune system and I are going to have a serious falling-out.

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