It's a bit of a Christmas-free zone round here to be honest, not for miserable reasons but just for the sake of my sanity! But tonight I found the prefect Christmas tree:



I was heading to the supermarket and spotted it in the yard of the garden centre in town. On the way back I couldn't resist stopping to take a picture. I'm thinking an avenue of them in the garden. Happy Christmas!!

A early, and rather rubbish, attempt at 'jazz hands'?

This is me when I was a baby. Where did all that gorgeous blonde hair go?!

It's always slow in the office on a Friday afternoon, the phone never rings and half of us go home, so last week when I was trapped there I was a bit bored. Inevitably I drifted to the Culture section of the Guardian website, looking for inspiration for things to see, and found myself on the Readers Recommend section of the music blog. Each week they pick a theme and people suggest songs around it, then the following week the top ten is published in the paper.

The theme last week was 'suburbia'. The Pet Shop Boys Suburbia was an obvious choice, as was a lot of Pulp songs, but I was reminded of an Everything but the Girl song called Hatfield 1980 and said so. Look what's at number 7 in the top ten. I'm pathetically thrilled!

As I drifted off to sleep last night I found myself daydreaming about someone else's boyfriend. Just before I nodded off I found myself thinking, "I think I'd like to have an affair with him." When I woke up this morning the thought came back to me and once I'd gotten over the surprise that I'd had the thought at all I decided that although it's not necessarily the smartest idea I've ever had it would certainly be fun! I wonder if I can tempt him...

I finally tracked the decorator down tonight and fixed a date for him to come and decorate, but it's not for over three weeks! On the plus side my busy period will be out of the way, but on the down side it means it'll be finished just as I go to Barcelona so I'll have to come back and assemble wardrobes! Next time I decorate it'll be in the spring like normal people do!

Here's my final '80s nostalgia for now:

I've been in a strange kind of limbo these last few weeks - I'm all ready to decorate, I just need a decorator! He's been on holiday but I finally managed to catch up with him today. He promised to ring back, but in that chaotic way good tradesmen often have he hasn't so I'm left on hold. I want to plan things, but instead all I can do is throw things away. If I have to wait much longer there's a danger I'll have thrown away everything I own!

Apart from that today was very ordinary. No one tried to gas me, which is a bonus. And the sun shone. And I had mince for tea which seemed to help. I'm drinking ale, because I'm in touch with my masculine side, and I'm thinking it might be time for bed. But before I go I'll leave you with another early '80s song, just because I can. It has a spoken bit in it which is so 80s! Enjoy!

I was sitting at work typing something dull when one of my colleagues said, "I thought I could smell gas downstairs". Another said, "that's funny, so did I, but I forgot about it". At which point my brain raced from gas to explosion to death and I blurted out, "I don't want to die at work! Go and sort it out!" This was followed by a very unscientific debate and it was decided that we'd live based on Colin thinking it smells like coal gas, not natural gas. We believed him because he was born in Wales and therefore coal is in his blood. Except I didn't and spent the rest of the day thinking I was going to die in a horrid explosion. Then I went to tap and once we'd warmed up the teacher turned the heating off. "Ooh, I can smell gas" she said. At which point all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and weep!

I ended yesterday evening rummaging through YouTube for obscure 80s pop songs, as you do! So I'll leave you with my favourite, two mad Scottish women in spotty dresses singing about suicide. God bless the 80s!

I spent yesterday morning knocking down half of Mum's fireplace. She wanted it done, I wasn't just being spiteful. Well, I was a bit: she'd been talking about doing it for two years but always had an excuse not to, so when she started again yesterday I said, "let's do it now!" Thirty minutes later there was a pile of rubble in the back garden and a slightly surprised look on Mum's face. I enjoyed it though!

In the evening I had a gentleman caller, a showjumper called Tim. He was posh, older than his picture suggested, and tiny! I'm used to big men you need two arms to hold - I could have got one arm all the way around him, and to be honest I spent some time trying, which put me off what I was doing a bit! It was blindingly obvious his thighs were used to clinging to horses. But he had the roughest stubble I've felt in a long time, and today my lips look a bit of a car crash!

Today has been a bit dull to be honest, and cold! I'm not looking forward to winter...

Oh dear God, I bought more Art!

Earlier in the summer I was in Holt with Thom, a small market town that has more delis and art galleries than it ought to. In one of the galleries I squealed with delight when I found they were selling stuff by four people whose work is on my walls, then I fell in love with a gorgeous photograph. Although it was big it was also £200, which is well over my budget for photographs.

But I found the photographer online and have been stalking him ever since! This month he has an exhibition of photographs of the Fens at a small gallery in a village I've passed through but never stopped in. So this afternoon off I went in search of a treat.

And I ended up buying three. Oops!

This is the one I fell in love with earlier in the summer:



And I couldn't resist this one:



The place I'm going to put them can take three, so I finished off the head theme with this:



The last one is the only one actually taken in the Fens, although you'd never know!

They look better in real life, it's a bit tricky to get a good picture of them whilst they're still wrapped. I obviously haven't stopped grinning all afternoon!

I think I'm finally getting thee hang of this weekend thing - yesterday was lovely and relaxing!

I had a lazy start with a bit of pottering and some throwing away then went for a much needed haircut. The barber was a bit tired and grumpy but I had a bit of a smile to myself when his mother turned up with his lunch.

Then I'd promised myself I'd go and see a film but I had an awkward one hour wait in a town full of teenagers. I was tempted to go home to get away from them but I told myself not to be so silly and instead went for tea and cake in Cafe Nero.

There were just three of us watching the film, which is scandalous but hardly surprising as the sun was shining and it was a glorious afternoon. The film was Somers Town, which was directed by the same person who made This is England, stars the same young actor and has been described as something of a companion piece.

It's set around King's Cross station in London and is about a teenager from Nottingham who runs away to London and becomes friends with a Polish boy whose father is working on the renovation of St Pancras station. It's shot in black and white and is only 75 minutes long so it feels more experimental, less complete than the other film. It didn't really work for me to be honest, I didn't believe the characters and the runaway was particularly annoying. The best bit was a short section at the end which was filmed in colour, had no dialogue and seemed like a dream. An interesting failure though.

Then I came home with the roof down in the afternoon sun, with the Pet Shop Boys singing New York City Boy and me grinning like a mad man. After that I had a nice lazy evening at home with the paper and fish fingers - ideal!