The not-so-secret diary

Sometimes I start writing posts and get side-tracked. This is one of those that should have seen the light of day two months ago. As they say better late than never. More importantly, I started 2015 with some radical changes to improve my life-work balance. Ahem, you may notice that with my new-found wisdom I have swapped the term 'work-life' around. Live to work or work to live? Or love to live to work? Anyhow I have finally found time to start reading through my stack of half-finished and yet-to-start books that were beginning to form a tall-ish rectangular pillar by my bedside table.  Do I hear the sniggers of Kindle-owners? Alas this safe, digital book filled life is not for me, for each evening I face the heart-racing task of balancing a glass of water, a phone-cum-alarm, a hair clip and other random objects on an ever-growing stack of 'real' books. Not to mention the 'living-on-the-edge' feeling of groggily switching the phone-cum-alarm off each mo...

After half a decade of shunning the last stop of the Victoria Line tube in London, last week I was persuaded by a friend to spend an evening at Brixton. I had heard of the transformation of this erstwhile slightly terrifying part of London into a new trendy locality. It seemed   worth checking out. On exiting the tube station I saw the high street now has more than the Pound-stretcher and betting shops. Rubbing shoulders (well almost) are some typical high street retail chains like H and M, and Marks and Spencer (if that doesn't break the rule of the number of 'ands' in a sentence I don't know what does. My blog software goes nutty if I use ampersands). We wandered down to the fresh fruit, vegetable, meat and fish market. Even at dusk, it all looked pretty fresh. However, after 10 minutes wandering down the lanes I confess I dragged my friend away as the sight of so many carcasses does tend to make me squeamish. But not before she managed to buy two huge onions fo...