Dear Bike Courier,

Please hurry up and deliver the work I'm expecting, as having to wear clothing in this weather is making me want to cry.

Thanks,
IJ

London is EFFING SCORCHING. Muggy. No breeze. I feel sluggish, duntish, and other negative words ending in -ish. It's too hot to think of more. And tonight I have the task of making a cottage pie. A couple of hours of cooking on the stove and baking in the oven. This must be done, as I have a packet of beef mince that's going out of date* and (what possessed me?) when we did an online grocery shop I ordered a 2 1/2 kilo bag of potatoes. I don't want to throw food out, there's no room for the beef in the freezer, so even though all I feel like ingesting is crisps, ice cream and loads of water, a pie will be cooked tonight. If it kills me. And it might.



*Those words normally form the beginning of any dinner invitation to my house

Here's what we did in France: ate shellfish (oysters = yum, raw mussels = yuk), visited Pezenas (that's where the door knocker is from), lazed by the pool, cycled by the water, and cooked giant, elaborate delicious meals.

The last month has flown by. Dan and Therese came over mid-May, and at the end of the month we all headed to France for a week of cheese, wine, sunburn, swimming in our lovely private pool, and playing Tom and Steve's patented game, Aquaminton. (It's badminton played in a pool, and it's amazing.) Dan and Therese left last week, and straight away I was on a train to Newcastle for a gig at the Star & Shadow, a beautiful venue that is part cimema, part bar, part performance space. The Actionettes danced and there was a screening of Beat Girl, and lovely Michael, who was running the night, even provided us with giant bags of popcorn. I only got back on Sunday afternoon, and since then I've been to a yoga class and that's about it. Oh and I went to Beckenham for my sister Jasia's birthday drinks. Also I picked up my framed Jeff Tweedy poster by my new girl-crush, Diana Sudyka. Here's her blog http://thetinyaviary.blogspot.com/ and somewhere here there should be a pic of the poster... I don't spend a lot of money on clothing or going out and I don't have any expensive hobbies (reading? a lot?) but I'll happily pay £60 to get a great poster framed. My next dream purchase is a Marcus Oakley painting, or another of Diana Sudyka's posters...

I'm slacking off again... so here are some random snippets from the last few weeks.

• Little sister is back from Gaza for a couple of weeks! Hurrah! She's travelling around the UK and to Poland, and is then planning to return to Palestine for the forseeable future.
• Me and Steve had a weekend in Whitstable, a pretty seaside resort in Kent, our first holiday since the epic and amazing honeymoon in October. Seafood was eaten (April is the end of oyster season, so we tried to scoff loads of those. BEST ONES were covered in bacon and BBQ sauce. That's how they eat them in New Zealand, apparently. Gotta love those Kiwis), pints of local raspberry beer were drunk on the beach, seaside strolls were taken.
  
• The Actionettes have had a few cracking gigs lately, and we've more over the next couple of months. A few weeks ago we danced at Shunt, the soon to be shut down cavernous venue under London Bridge station, and last night we were the guests of the Dulwich Ukulele Club at their May Ball. The hall where the ball took place was decked in spring flowers, there was a Maypole and there was a Green Man ritual. I didn't quite understand it, but I was drunk by then. In June we're heading to Newcastle, then July has Gay Shame in London with the people from Duckie, a tiki birthday party in Bournemouth, and (fingers crossed) the Port Eliot literary festival in Cornwall.
  
• This warm weather is bringing with it the unwelcome return of fucking huge spiders. Get out of my house!
• Bank holiday weekend so far = good. Lie-in, impromptu picnic and frisbee in the Horniman Gardens, red wine and chips in a lovely Bermondsey pub.
• Night night.
  

Last night was date night. We kept it cheap(ish) by heading to the East End Thrift Store for their monthly shopping event. I thought this just meant they were open late, but NO, there was free booze too, which does indeed make it an event. I did pretty well - two sundresses, a floaty floral skirt, and a blouse for T. Steve bought a jumper and just hung out by the fitting rooms, drinking free beer and watching ladies getting changed. Oh and he was wearing the jeans with the bad zip, so his fly was undone too. Way to go, perv! We tried to go to Tayaabs after, but there was a scrum outside, and it was just too much hassle, so Lahore Kebab House it was. Giant spicy meal (so spicy that Steve cried), a walk across London bridge (less romantic for being in a howling gale), and watching The Apprentice on BBC iPlayer in bed. Perfect romantic night.

Over the past month I've been fearfully ordering hundreds of pounds worth of new kitchen. I say fearfully because I can't actually believe that in a couple of weeks our crap old kitchen will be gone and we'll have an amazing new one. Is it really that simple? You buy the stuff, pay a man to fit it all, and voila, new kitchen? Why didn't we do this sooner?

I've also been trying to see my sister and Mru Mru a lot (mru mru is how cats purr in Polish. Just as Polish dogs don't say 'woof woof' but 'how how'). Not sure why I call L Mru Mru, I think it's because once when he was fussing and threatening to wail, I sang him a couple of Polish lullabies about kittens and he calmed down. Anyway, he is a little bundle of cuddly fun, and very sweet. He's about 5 weeks old and just beginning to smile.

Saturday is the Actionettes' crunch-bustin' club, Everything Must Go-Go. We're pulling out all the stops with careers advice, a black market stall, Lidl hamper raffle, and dancing till dawn. I'm not amazingly excited about our outfits, but it should be a good night.

Mostly pictures this time... Nice Friday things: Baby Leon, sunny sky, Co-op daffodils, tea and banana walnut cake.

Valentine’s Day was spent drunkenly caterwauling karaoke at the Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes. I belted out a version of ‘My Sharona’ so atrocious that even now, five days on, I cringe thinking about it. Steve went to watch some football and showed up at 9.30, but we did manage to have some romantic quality time together, kicking Mags’s and Emerald’s asses at table football. We don’t celebrate Valentine’s (let’s call it by its initials, VD, for speed of typing) but I still get upset when I don’t get a card or anything. Steve insists we agreed years ago that we instead celebrate ‘Ily and Steve Day’, the date of which is pretty fluid and generally falls a few days after VD, when all the soppy-eyed fools have gone back to sitting on the couch watching University Challenge, and the restaurant menus have returned to normal. So it was on Monday that I arranged to meet my husband at Mason’s, a restaurant in Ladywell we’d been wanting to try for years. It has a three-course evening menu for £13, so in the interests of staying local and staying cheap, he’d booked a table. The food was pretty good, and at that price you can’t really complain. Steve also gave me a big bunch of tulips and a lovely card of a cat doing yoga. Who says romance is dead? Happy I&SD!

Things to look forward to

Right this minute, as I type, my sister is in hospital preparing to give birth. I am on Baby Standby and obsessively checking my phone several times an hour for updates. She’s not fully in labour yet, so can still lie around texting me about how bored she is.

Holiday in France. At the end of May, we and some friends are going to the south of France for a week of wine, cheese, swimming in our own pool, eating amazing seafood, riding bikes (basically the entire holiday is going to be Flight of the Conchords’ foux de fa fa made real) and wafting around in maxi dresses. CAN’T WAIT.

Today is Fatty Thursday! Forget Fat Tuesday, or Shrove Tuesday to give it its boring name. Tlusty Czwartek is the day in Poland where you make donuts and eat them all. My mum is doing the former, and I’m popping round later to help out with the other bits.

Things to not look forward to

Just been to the doctor, who diagnosed me with ‘classic sciatica’. Yippee. It doesn’t hurt, but my left leg is a bit numb and tingly and feels cold. No more aerobics for me, just swimming and a bit of yoga.

Swings and roundabouts

Just paid tax bill, still feeling I've been ripped off and massively overestimated the amount of tax I owe. So come April I'll grapple with it again and hopefully claw back some cash... May need help with this (Emerald! In exchange for dinner!) Good news arrived today with my credit card statement (NEVER a sentence I thought I'd write). I've transferred the balance of my ridiculously high-interest card to a 0% card, but I somehow overpaid the transfer amount. So essentially my credit card company owe me £540 and are paying it into my bank account. Woot!

Crafty things I've done while - ahem - resting these past few weeks

1) Made a maxidress to take to the south of France. It is made from a polycotton bedsheet which I dyed a murky grey/blue. It's a funny shape and I think the hem is a bit too narrow to walk properly in. I will still wear it. I'd take pictures and post them here, if I thought Steve could stop laughing long enough to hold the camera.

2) Work in progress: making stuffed bear/cat/rabbit hybrid toys for Maddy's baby and my nephew (due in about 3 weeks, so excited!). They're going to be made from a blue flowery Cath Kidston fabric someone gave me a few years ago. They're a bit freestyle and I apologise in advance for any nightmares/long-term trauma they may cause.

3) Not crafty but long overdue - a new kitchen is on the horizon for the J-D family. AT LAST. I detest my kitchen with a passion. It has no storage (people think I'm exaggerating, until I show them space for a few food items and 4 mugs and they shut up), doors hanging off their hinges, and massive gaps behind the units, forming an adventure playground for mice. But we bit the bullet and headed to Ikea, and got a not-too-terrifying quote for a new one.

Am nearly as excited by the prospect of a new kitchen as by the imminent arrival of my nephew.