Category: Uncategorized

Yesterday I had the awful experience of going to my cousin’s funeral – she was only 33 when she died on 30 December.

It all happened very suddenly and was obviously a huge shock, not least for her husband and immediate family.

The thing about going to any funeral of someone who isn’t ‘old’ or who hasn’t had a long illness is that it makes you look at your own life and those closest to you.

The thought of leaving behind my dearly beloved and two daughters is a sobering thought. Indeed as C and I both agreed last night, we both used to be quite unfazed by the thought of death, but having kids changes them totally.

The other thing that occurred to me is how difficult it is to ‘celebrate’ someone’s life on the day of a funeral.

Yes, you can remember all the things about them you loved and the memories that you will treasure long after they’ve gone, but however hard you try, it is always a day of deep sorrow.

RIP Jan

We went up to the South Bank on Sunday to visit the Bankside Frost Fair, which was all very charming and we had a lovely day out.

We decided to do lunch in Pizza Express, simply because it’s nice and child-friendly and we know A will eat stuff from there. I ordered a pizza with a topping consisting of ham, mushroom, olives and sat back to await its arrival.

Unbelieveably, it turned up with an apology from the waitress, because they’d run out of mushrooms!

Yes, a pizza restaurant had run out of one of its staple topping ingredients.

Not only was I irritated because they neglected to mention this before they cooked the flippin’ thing, but then 10 minutes later, I spotted one of their waiting staff sneak back in to the restaurant with two Sainsbury’s carrier bags full of mushrooms!

To be honest, I’m not sure what sort of point I’m making here, but surely a restaurant such as PE should be able to work out how many pounds of mushrooms they need on an average weekend?

Celebs lend their name face and name to many things. Heather Mills is desperate to get people to take landmines seriously (or should that be ‘her’ seriously), for example. Meanwhile, stars such as Will Young and Helena Bonham Carter are starring in this year’s Oxfam Unwrapped campaign.

However, I can’t have been the only person to have been mildly baffled that Dolly Parton was heading a literacy program in the UK, of all places.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a bit of Dolly. Who couldn’t love a woman who ‘tumbles out of bed and stumbles to the kitchen to pour herself a cup of ambition’?

But why on earth do we need Miss Parton to front (ahem!) a campaign that encourages kids to read and write better. I mean, how many kids know who Dolly is?

I know that half the role models out there are only semi-literate themselves, but the people behind this must have been able to find someone a little more suitable, surely.