So far today has been a big wet raspberry, but it'll get better around 7pm, when Mags and my two lovely sisters arrive for dinner. For the vegetarian sister there's cheese and salmon (yes, she eats fish), for the other vegetarian there's sausage and ham (she won't eat beef but everything else is fine) and for me and other sis there's a lot of everything else. Pumpkin, coconut and sweet potato soup, too.

Things I am watching on eBay

• Black cat brooches, to be pinned to orange dress for Halloween Actionettes gig
• Black spider brooches, as above, but they're too scary and I know I'd keep seeing them on my dress and freaking out
• Vintage biscuit tins and canisters. Plan is to buy some and bake amazing cookies, and give these as homemade Christmas gifts in the tins
• Usual lineup of 70s vintage dresses with puffy sleeves, patterned yokes and A-line skirts. Sigh.

Baby Leon, last seen on this blog at a cute five weeks, is now an all-crawling, loud-laughing, curious eight-month-old little sweetheart. He loves books and music and wiping his nose on his auntie's clothing.

How did I go nearly three and a half months without posting? It was easy. And it's not even like I was so busy doing amazing stuff the whole time. Since the end of June, I've done... nothing. Well, a bit of work, a weekend in Bournemouth with the Actionettes, five days in Wales for my and Steve's wedding anniversary, and not much else. I did buy tickets for next May's All Tomorrow's Parties, as it's curated by Pavement and I've wanted to go to ATP for years, so this was all the encouragement I needed.

Guilt has made me update this blog. I was reading about this thing http://www.broadsummit.com/about/ on Mimi Smartypants's blog, and it made me sad and jealous. If I'd been good and updated my blog daily, or at least a couple of times a week, maybe I would be attending the UK equivalent (although I bet there isn't one...) of this sweet shindig. A weekend doing yoga and tasting wine? At a spa? It's a hard life.

I had a look at some of the blogs of the attendees. I really liked a few, but there really is a certain arrogance you need to keep - and very regularly update - a blog. Whole conversations retyped, verbatim. Endless stream-of-consciousness riffs on your love/hate of sweetcorn. I mean, who cares? If I did like those other ladies do and wrote down every last thing that happened to me, my blog for today might read something like this:

Got up. Late. Coffee, toast and marmite for breakfast. Did some proofreading, but not enough. Faffed about online for ages. Steve went to Lewisham market to buy vegetables - he got me a really nice pumpkin. We had leftover chili for lunch: yum. In the afternoon I went to Brockley Mess and had ginger cake and a pot of Earl Grey. The cafe was full of mums with babies. I glared at a small child pretending to wail and it made me feel evil but actually very happy. Walked home.

That did actually feel pretty cathartic...

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.